FACESCAPES: Pushing the Limits with Watercolor Portraiture with Dan Smith

 This 3-day workshop will be held in-doors and out-of-doors. It will integrate art history with art-making styles and philosophies comparing and contrasting the classic with the expressive ideas in art. Capturing a likeness will also be combined with intense experimentation in an attempt to reveal an internal spirit. From an objective to a subjective approach to portrait painting, participants will be challenged to think and act in new ways utilizing integrative techniques and attitudes during their art-making process.

Throughout the workshop intimacies of personality and mood will be investigated and revealed resulting in the expression of the sitter’s essence. The vocabulary of art laid over the composition of the face will involve a traditional combination of line, color, shape, texture, form and scale. These formal approaches will merge with contemporary issues and strategies resulting in a psychologically charged image of a unique individual.

During the past twenty years, Dan Smith has taught college level studio courses in painting, drawing, design and photography, as well as in humanities and art appreciation courses, at colleges in South Carolina, Virginia, and North Carolina including Claflin University, Virginia Commonwealth University, Hampton University, and Appalachian State University.

This workshop will be held in conjunction with Dan Smith’s one-person exhibition in McMaster Gallery shown from October 15 through December 15. Smith earned his BFA and MFA degrees in Painting from East Carolina University and the University of South Carolina, respectively. In 1989 his first watercolor portrait, created as a USC student, was selected by internationally renowned painter and teacher Katherine Chang Liu for the South Carolina Watercolor Society’s exhibition and travelling show. His painting, Job, was also purchased by Betsy Havens of Havens Gallery, who became his first art dealer.