Abstract Painting as Visual Language
A guided audio course in abstraction, and the beginning of a visual language that's distinctly yours.
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Introduction
Everything you need to know before Lesson 1: what to gather, how to work, and what this course is actually for.
Everything you need to know before Lesson 1: what to gather, how to work, and what this course is actually for.
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Lesson 1: Wassily Kandinsky - Color and Vibration
Inspired by Kandinsky's belief that color vibrates like music, you'll make marks guided by sound and feeling. No plan, just color and instinct.
Inspired by Kandinsky's belief that color vibrates like music, you'll make marks guided by sound and feeling. No plan, just color and instinct.
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Lesson 2: Mark Rothko - Emotion and Depth
Rothko believed his paintings weren't pictures but environments; spaces you entered with your whole body. In this lesson, you give color that much room.
Rothko believed his paintings weren't pictures but environments; spaces you entered with your whole body. In this lesson, you give color that much room.
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Lesson 3: Agnes Martin - Rhythm and Stillness
Agnes Martin made paintings that look almost empty until you step closer. In this lesson, you draw quiet, repeating lines and find out what repetition does to your attention.
Agnes Martin made paintings that look almost empty until you step closer. In this lesson, you draw quiet, repeating lines and find out what repetition does to your attention.
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Lesson 4: Hilma af Klint - Symbols and Trust
Hilma af Klint trusted the images that arrived without her permission and kept them hidden for decades. In this lesson, you let symbols come without planning and see what shows up.
Hilma af Klint trusted the images that arrived without her permission and kept them hidden for decades. In this lesson, you let symbols come without planning and see what shows up.
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Lesson 5: Sonia Delaunay - Rhythm and Movement
Sonia Delaunay put abstraction on jerseys, book covers, and cars. Color and rhythm as a living language, not a gallery object. In this lesson, you bring everything from the week into movement.
Sonia Delaunay put abstraction on jerseys, book covers, and cars. Color and rhythm as a living language, not a gallery object. In this lesson, you bring everything from the week into movement.
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Lesson 6: Integration - Your Visual Language
Within the five pieces you made in this course, what kept showing up? In this final session, you lay everything out and look at what your hand has been saying all along.
Within the five pieces you made in this course, what kept showing up? In this final session, you lay everything out and look at what your hand has been saying all along.
Five abstract painters. Five practices. One question threading through all of them: what does your hand want to say?
This course explores how Wassily Kandinsky, Mark Rothko, Agnes Martin, Hilma af Klint, and Sonia Delaunay each developed a visual language, and guides you to experiment with finding your own.
Each lesson pairs a short art history conversation with a guided practice inspired by that painter's approach. You'll work with color as vibration, emotional field, repetition, intuitive symbol, and rhythm. Not to paint like any of them, but to find out what happens when you try each approach with your own hand. A sixth integration session brings everything together and asks what you've begun to discover about your own visual language.
Because this is an audio-only course, your imagination does the work a screen can't. You build the painting in your mind before your hand responds and allow curiosity and experimentation to lead the way.
By the end you'll have five practices to return to and the beginning of a visual language that's distinctly yours.
Music sourced from MusOpen and Wikimedia Commons. Course headline artwork by Kristen Phillips. Individual lessons feature work by the artists themselves.