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Education

Alla Prima Flower Painting & Invention with Amy Brnger

Time: April 11, 2025 @ 9:30 am - 4:00 pm
Number of Classes/Day: Friday & Saturday
End Date: April 12
Register By: April 1
Ages: 14+
Venue: Peggy Burruss Art Studio
Cost: $425

Let’s work quickly and with purpose, capturing the essence of flowers in single session, alla prima painting. Our work together will include:

  • Identifying major shapes and shifts in space;

  • using vanishing and firm edges to establish structure and atmosphere;

  • mixing luminous color and related neutrals to create vibrant paintings. 


We will use observation to create inventive and personal paintings, liberating our work from just copying what we see, to creating a painting that encompasses personal expression, emotional responsiveness to nature, and spontaneity in mark making.  

Each day, Amy will review alla prima techniques and strategies, then complete an oil painting demo. After the demonstration, participants will work on single session paintings and get direct and instructive feedback from Amy.  

Amy will demo in oil. Oil and acrylic painters are welcome!

Supply List : Supply List for Alla Prima Flower Painting 2 Day Workshop

Instructor : Amy Brgner

Amy Brnger, from Eliot, Maine, has painted the natural world for as long as she has been an artist. She enjoys painting flowers from her garden, interior views of her home, and forgotten, overlooked landscape views. Her paintings are expressive, energetic, and attempt to capture the changing nature of living things. She also teaches painting, focused largely on alla prima flowers and en plein air landscape, both in-person and online. Her work can be seen at amybrnger.com and amybrnger.podia.com. She is represented by galleries in the Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Virginia.

Artist Statement :

Painting nature has been my life’s work. As I often paint flowers, and am female, I regularly receive the feedback that I must be a happy person. I’m no more happy or unhappy than the next; but I do know that the act of painting, especially when I am immersed in nature, makes me feel complete. It might be those experiences that make their way onto my panels. The way I push paint around a panel, feel the paint on my palette knife and brush, depends on my response to the weather, the season, my environment. The ephemeral quality of nature forces me to look hard, make firm decisions, yet explore the feeling of paint, the brush, and experiment with 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 a reflection of how I see the world in that particular moment, then I want to keep it. When I work past that point, the likelihood of having an overworked image is
great. Though I know the world can be unforgiving and even brutal, I continue to see beauty, often in the most unremarkable and ordinary of 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.

Sponsored by:

IWT

with Education Access Program Discounts Underwritten by

Foster Fuels