County Mayo, Ireland

Achill Island

Ireland Painting Workshop And Tour Led By Kathleen Jacobs 

MAY 28 - JUNE 7, 2024

The focus will be the art and culture of Western Ireland.

  • Nine days with Kathleen Jacobs your artistic instructor and Cormac Cullen your personal local Irish guide.

  • Tour limited to 12 passengers.

  • Experience Ireland with majority of evenings in one hotel, all en-suite accommodations, and water view rooms.

  • Relaxed & flexible itinerary.

  • Impromptu visits with local artists.

Join artist and painting instructor Kathleen Jacobs for a painting workshop excursion to County Mayo, Ireland! Your group will have your own personal local Irish guide, Cormac Cullen, based in Westport, Ireland. You will be taken to the beautiful countryside to explore this ancient and mythical country. There are spectacular monastic and megalithic ruins to seek out in your daily adventures. 

Return to your lovely hotel after painting all day to dine, converse and mingle with fellow artists. You can also partake in evenings listening to Irish musicians play traditional music in the local pubs.  A tour will be provided to the Ballinglen Arts Foundation, located in Ballycastle as well as other off the beaten path locations for painting the Irish landscape. 

We invite you to immerse yourself in an enriching and creative experience that will expand your painting practice and experience. 


Students of intermediate to advanced levels are welcome, open to all painters using oil, watercolor, acrylic or gouache.

Kathleen Jacobs will provide individualized instruction, demonstrations, discussions and presentations that will provide the format for an intensive and exciting learning experience. The focus is on the landscape of County Mayo, where you will experience first-hand the beauty and richness of Ireland. Jacobs will emphasize the importance of drawing and composition as a foundation of a painting. Working small, participants will work to create work with a spirit of place. Her teaching emphasizes learning to see and look at the landscape to understand the formal elements of painting, shape, color, space, form while responding to the grace, order and beauty that is in front of you. There will be ample opportunity to discuss each other’s work and to discuss other international painters throughout history to enrich our experience in Ireland.

Fitness and Health
Walks and hikes can be on rough terrain and up to a couple miles in length. Trails can be uneven, slippery. You need to be able to climb uphill or over rocks. All participants need to be agile and able to manage their own gear and luggage in and out of the vehicle. Anyone who is reasonably fit should be able to take part in most of the activities. If you have any special needs or any physical condition that you feel might prevent you from fully participating, please contact Strabo Tours with your concerns (607-423-2525).

LEARN MORE HERE

Florence and Tuscany, Italy

Chianti

Italy Painting Tour Of Florence & Tuscan Hill Towns

June 10-19, 2024

  • Plein Air Small Format Landscape Drawing and Painting workshop with Professional Tour Leader Kathleen Jacobs
  • Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, with its rich tapestry of history depicted in its architecture, sculptures, and paintings
  • A stay in the Tuscan countryside, with its grapevines and cypress trees
  • Tuscany’s medieval towns and villages: Monteriggioni, San Gimignano, Volpaia, Radda in Chianti, and others, equally well-preserved
  • Departure limited to 12 participants to optimize your artistic experience

In this workshop students will paint in the open air of the beautiful Tuscan landscape. Each day we will look as Corot did, to interpret the soft color-palette of Italy. The hazy landscape paintings and poetic scenes of Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot helped define plein air painting today. Like Corot we will seek to see and express the dreamlike quality of the color and light of Italy while staying true to our “first impression” to capture the quiet dignity of the natural world.


Kathleen Jacobs and About this Class

In this class students will start with intuitive sketches of the natural hills, trees and foliage of the Italian landscape. Students look carefully to make pencil compositional studies to settle into the view of such a special place. Working in any painting medium, students will make small intimate paintings in one sitting. Like Corot, students will look to investigate composition, using form, shape, line, and color while working in nature. Emphasis will be placed on capturing the feeling of the landscape, without over analysis. We will use the historic color paint palette of Corot to express emotion.


Kathleen Jacobs will provide individualized instruction during plein air excursions, demonstrations, discussions, and presentations that will provide the format for an intensive exciting learning experience. Working small, participants will work to create work with a spirit of place. Her teaching emphasizes looking at the landscape and to understand the formal elements of painting, shape, color, space, form while responding to the grace, order and beauty that is in front of you. There will be ample opportunity to discuss each other’s work and to discuss other international painters throughout history to enrich our experience in Italy.

Grounding Stone Farm
Contoocook, New Hampshire

Three-Day 

Small Format Outdoor Painting Workshop 

with Kathleen Dunn Jacobs

June 28, 29, 30, 2024

FRIDAY, SATURDAY AND SUNDAY

9:30 am – 4:30pm

Grounding Stone Farm: organic blueberry farm and artist retreat.

289 Maple Street, Contoocook, NH

$525

Maximum of 12 students

Sign up here

Get material list: email kathleejacobs@groundingstonefarm.com

(Please read cancellation policy for Grounding Stone Farm workshops and the bottom below prior to signing up.)

Working outside on the grounds of Grounding Stone Organic Blueberry Farm and a short ride to to the local mountain view, students will investigate and hone observational skills to draw and paint the natural beauty of our fields, trees, mountains and hills. Drawing and painting exercises will be used to help understand the distinctive color, shape, form and structure that naturally exist in our beautiful outside world.

  • Individual attention will be given to each student with an emphasis on helping to find your vision, using your unique eye and imagination to interpret what you see as we look together at the tree branches, bushes, mass of forests, fields, rocks and mountains and local structures within the place.
  • Composition will be one of many topics, using shape, color, light and structure as it relates to your painting and what nature presents to us.
  • Drawing sketches will help students to understand a simplified sense of space to help find the natural compositional forms that exist, without an over analysis of detail or using tired, formulaic means to make a painting.
  • A slide presentation and lecture is included to learn and discuss key landscape masters to include Corot, Cezanne, Degas, Avery, Morandi, Diebenkorn, and many contemporary artists of distinction.
  • Painting will not exceed 10” x 10", unless very experienced with working larger outside
  • All levels of experience welcome.
  • Material List provided.
  • Housing not provided but a list of inviting local inns or hotels to stay for the weekend will be provided after signing up.
  • Lunch can be picked up each day within 5 minutes of the farm in downtown Contoocook.
  • Call for any questions about the workshop.

A few words about fitness and health:

We will be outdoors from 9:30 - 4:30 with breaks as needed and for lunch.

Walks and hikes can be on uneven terrain/grass and up to a 1/4-3/4 mile in length with the option of painting close to the barn premises.  Covered areas provided in case of inclement weather.  All participants need to be agile, reasonably fit and able to manage and transport their own painting gear.  Chairs, small tables and wagons available if needed. Anyone who is reasonably fit should be able to take part in the activity of painting outdoors. 


About Kathleen Dunn Jacobs:
Kathleen’s work evokes her reverence for the natural landscape. Her love of the natural world is evident in her soft tonally related colors that evoke a sense of calm. Her work has been exhibited alongside the landscape paintings of contemporary artists Wolf Kahn, March Avery, Richard Yarde, Lois Dodd, Stuart Shils, amongst others and is collected nationally and internationally. She has work included in the corporate and private collections throughout the US. Jacobs attended the University of Massachusetts where she received a BFA in Painting and Art History. She earned the University Chancellor's Talent Award for outstanding achievement and subsequently awarded another scholarship to study abroad at the La Napoule Art Foundation in France. She earned her MFA in Visual Arts, Critical Theory and Painting from Lesley University College of Art and Design in Cambridge, MA. Formerly the Director of Art Education at the Currier Museum of Art, she now teaches painting and drawing for various art educational institutions. She paints full time out of her studio at her farm, in Contoocook, NH where she lives with her family and grows certified organic blueberries.

Go to www.groundingstonefarm.com or call 413.563.5912 or go to: Sign up here.

Cancellation Policy: If you cancel your class after sending payment via credit card through this website, you will be refunded the workshop fee minus the processing fees that are charge to me at the time you sign up, that I have paid and do not get refunded for, Total refund will be $508.00 per person (and not $525.00) and cancellation must be made 30 days prior to the workshop date. If cancellation is made within the 30 day period, 50% of the workshop fee minus the $17 process fee, or $245.50 will be refunded. If your spot is filled by another student in time for the class a refund of fee minus the $17 will be refunded.

Vinalhaven Island, Maine 

Nature Painting Workshop

September 19-24, 2024

Plein-Air Landscape Sketching and Painting

More information here

Overview

In this drawing and painting nature workshop students will be immersed in the beautiful views of Vinalhaven on the coast of Maine. Vinalhaven is not your characteristic Maine destination, it will feel like stepping back in time, without the typical New England tourism or development. Arriving by ferry, you will stay in the only hotel on the island. Days will be devoted looking and exploring using the painting and drawing medium of your choice. There will be several evening salon-style reviews and conversations about the work, allowing for group discussions about process and ideas in a supportive environment. Join me this fall to paint in nature on this pristine coastal island for the perfect artist retreat for like-minded landscape painters. This departure is limited to a maximum of ten participants. We always welcome tour companions who are not artists. The trip’s leisurely pace will provide ample opportunity to wander around town and enjoy time with the locals that call this island home.

There is wireless internet at your accommodations. Individuals can pay for parking fee at the Rockland Ferry parking lot along with fee for walking on the ferry. We will notify you if there are other participants living in your area, so you can carpool to Rockland. Keep in mind that the Maine coast weather forces us to be flexible, but not to worry, there are plenty of scenes to capture right from your accommodations. There is also a lovely art gallery to explore.

Kathleen Jacobs and About this Class

In this class students will start with intuitive sketches of the natural the landscape. Students look carefully to make pencil compositional studies to settle into the view of such a special place. Working in any painting medium, students will make small intimate paintings in one sitting. Students will look to investigate composition, using form, shape, line, and color while working in nature. Emphasis will be placed on capturing the feeling of the landscape, without over analysis. 

Kathleen Jacobs will provide individualized instruction during plein air excursions, demonstrations, and discussions, that will provide the format for an intensive exciting learning experience. Working small, participants will work to create work with a spirit of place. Her teaching emphasizes looking at the landscape and to understand the formal elements of painting, responding to the grace, order and beauty that is in front of you. There will be ample opportunity to discuss each other’s work and to discuss other painters throughout history to enrich your experience.

Fitness and Health
Walks and hikes can be on rough terrain and up to a couple miles in length. Trails can be uneven, slippery. You need to be able to climb uphill or over rocks. All participants need to be agile and able to manage their own gear and luggage in and out of the vehicle. Anyone who is reasonably fit should be able to take part in most of the activities. If you have any special needs or any physical condition that you feel might prevent you from fully participating, please contact Strabo Tours with your concerns (607-423-2525).