Areas of focus:

• Master color-mixing with a limited palette; value control; modulate chroma to achieve muted grays; develop high-key, low-key and middle- key palettes; learn to mix on the canvas as well as on the palette for cleaner, more vibrant combinations.
• Learn the “process” of painting: how 80 percent of a painting is achieved in the start; control shapes, values, tints and tones, edges.
• How using painting knives, layering, glazing and scumbling techniques can add new dimensions to your work.
• Instructor will give individual attention to each participant so each can advance at her/his own pace in a relaxed, no-pressure environment.

John DeFrancesco – Artist based in Monument, Colorado
John was educated as a landscape architect and horticulturalist. His interest in plants and their place in the garden is evident in many of his oil paintings. Subtlety and softness of mood, edges and color are distinctive in his work. The Tri-Lakes Center for the Arts, Palmer Lake Art Group, Pikes Peak Library District and U.S. Air Force Academy have awarded his artwork.

Artist Statement:
I believe the ability to paint is a God-given gift that is to be shared. Therefore, I am driven to record nature emotionally, not simply artistically. And I want to share the emotional experience with the viewer of the painting. I work to capture not just an impression of what I see, but an interpretation of what I feel. Sometimes that calls for subtlety and softness of mood; at other times it dictates boldness of form and color.
Just as music is made by playing one note after another, a painting comes together by placing one note of color against another. There are so many colors in nature that our brains don’t process when we look at an object. My task is to find the various nuances of color in any given scene and place those onto the canvas. That process produces a gamut of mood ranging from a rainy day in a meadow to a sun-filled time at a beach, and everything in between. In viewing my paintings, if one feels the warmth of the sun, recalls a childhood memory of home or an event sees the river water flowing or senses the fragrances in a garden, then I have accomplished my goal.