Amy Brnger Workshop 2025: 23 September – 02 October

As long as I have painted I have been influenced by nature, the changing seasons and my emotional state. My approach to a bouquet, a landscape, or an interior will be different depending upon weather, the quality of light, whether I am tired and crabby or energized and happy. All are reflected in the final image. The way I push paint around a panel, feel the paint on my palette knife and brush, depends on my feeling state and the current season, even the daily weather. The ephemeral quality of nature forces me to look hard, make firm decisions, yet explore the feeling of oil paint, the brush, and try out any tools available to me that enliven and energize the paint surface. 

I try hard to keep the surprises that make their way onto a panel and stop the painting a few steps before it is finished. Sometimes the image might look awkward and slightly underdone, but if it feels genuine and somehow a reflection of how I see the world in that particular moment, then I want to keep it. When I keep working past that point, the likelihood of scraping the response away, or having an overworked image, is great.

Though I know the world can be unforgiving and brutal, especially these days, I  continue to see beauty, and most often in unremarkable and ordinary places. When you look at my flowers and interiors in January, birds and blooms in May, reflections of my studio and hot bright roofs in August, and the somber light of fall and end of season blooms, I hope you catch a glimpse of the world I love.

This workshop will combine the best of both worlds during late fall in France.  Participants will paint flowers and landscape inside and out.  Amy is very experienced at teaching an alla prima, all at once, method of painting, which translates and pairs perfectly to en plein air painting outside.  Should the weather require inside painting time, Amy will arrange flowers and participants can paint still life, incorporating interiors and windows with the florals.

Amy’s approach to painting is direct, loose, and expressive.  She teaches painters how to mix bright, saturated colors, but also how to temper them with related neutrals.  Amy provides working demonstrations in oil, although participants can work with water-based paint or oil sticks. If you would like to learn to work more expressively, spontaneously, and enjoy the actual experience of painting, this is a travel workshop for you!