Acrylic Painting (Introductory to Advanced Level)

Acrylic Painting (Introductory to Advanced Level)
Date: April 25 – June 13, 2024 (Thursdays, 8 weeks)
Time: 6 pm to 9 pm
Instructor: Onni Nordman
Fee: $132 plus HST (Members) | Fee: $151.80 plus HST (Non-Members)

You are already an artist. You just have to paint earnestly and then learn when to stop, to know when you have a work of art in front of you. That’s more important than skill. Everyone has a style that is natural to them and expresses who they are. You can tell when you’ve found it because the work suddenly becomes fun.

This class is a chance to find out how your personal way of making marks fits into the thousand ways of making pictures given to us by a thousand years of painting, in an eight-week one-on-one mentorship. It can also work as a mini art-history course. Even when you make something that seems wrong, you can find an example of a celebrated artist who has done that same thing deliberately, for an intended purpose.

Material List:

• Sheets of bristol board (Dollarama)
• Paint brushes
• Paint: red, yellow, blue and white
• Rags
• Jars for water
• Masking tape

Onni Nordman is a painter from Unama’ki-Cape Breton whose home and studio are on the cliffs of South Bar. His work has been acknowledged by Creative Nova Scotia and the Canada Council for the Arts. He was named Visual Artist of 2015 by Cape Breton Centre for Craft & Design. Onni’s work is unique, innovative and decidedly contemporary. Formally trained at Nova Scotia College of Art and Design, he returned to Sydney in 1995 and has continued his work of painting and creating many projects over time.

In 2015, Onni had a show and a two-month residency in Munich, Germany and another show in Helsinki, Finland. In 2020 Onni returned to Germany for three shows and two residencies, the first of which happened to be at the Max Planck Institute for Biochemistry where the scientists were studying the pandemic before it took hold. The third show and residency were postponed when Canadians were called home. All his new work is about what he learned there.