Landscape from the Inside Out

There are two landscapes in every painting. There's the one in front of you — the reference photo, exactly as it was when you took it. And there's the one you carry inside you: memory, feeling, the parts of you that shift and drift once you give them room to.

Most of us learn to paint by staying faithful to the first one. This workshop is about learning to trust the second.

Over six weeks, you'll work on a small collection of landscape paintings — starting two in the very first session, and a new one most weeks after that, always coming back to rework what's already begun rather than rushing toward a finish. Cold wax comes into the teaching from Week 2, giving you a way to build up, scrape back, and find what's underneath.

By the end, nothing will look quite like the photo it started from. That's the point.

Landscape from the Inside Out starts 28 September and runs for six weeks.

Week 1 — The Horizon and the Ground

We begin with two paintings — one from a reference, one alongside me with none. The landscape in front of you, and the internal landscape you carry with you.

Week 2 — Mood and Atmosphere

A new painting begins, a tonalist subject from a reference. Cold wax enters here too, layered over the first two paintings from Week 1.

Week 3 — Mist and Obscurity

A new painting begins, leaning into uncertainty — things half-seen, the unknown, creative confusion.

Week 4 — Erosion

A new painting begins, drawing on rocks and cliffs — what scraping back and wearing away reveals underneath. The same scraping and distressing gets worked back into earlier paintings too.

Week 5 — Reflection and Water

A new painting begins — lakes, water, the sky mirrored below. The bridge between the outer landscape and the inner one, worked into earlier pieces as well as the new one.

Week 6 — Where They Meet

No new painting. All six come out together, given a final layer, scrape-back, or whatever each piece asks for.