April 25, 2023

Helen Masacz – ‘Momento Mori’ workshop

We’re thrilled to welcome new tutor Helen Masacz, who is teaching an atelier style still life workshop in oils called ‘Momento Mori’. A highly accomplished oil painter, Helen has won many awards for her fine paintings and portraits. Exhibiting and selling nationally, she also teaches occasionally, so we are lucky enough to catch her.

‘Momento Mori’ is a Latin phrase for objects that symbolise your journey through life towards death. Classic imagery usually include skulls, hour glasses, clocks and guttering candles…..but you will be painting something that has a special meaning for YOU!

Saturday 24th June

10am – 4pm

£85

BOOK THE WORKSHOP HERE

A bit more about the workshop

Open to anyone who would like to learn how to master oils, experienced tutor Helen will guide you through the steps of classical atelier painting of a single object. ‘Atelier’ is a French word meaning studio and has come to mean a style of painting shared by all students in the class. For this workshop, you’ll be asked to bring an object with a special meaning and spend the day in close observation and painting. Each object will be housed in a box, giving it parametres and allowing for high contrast and shadow to create a really dynamic painting.

Still Life Painting – Step by Step

Step 1 – raw umber underpainting

Step 2 – adding colour

Step 3 – adding detail

About Helen

As a professional painter, Helen favours high contrast in her own work. She draws on the paradox between the familiar and the subtle narrative underlying contemporary culture. Masacz considers the relationship with art as a constant ‘work in progress’, evolving and changing with the creative current.

Masacz graduated with a BA Hons in Fine Art then studied further at a London Atelier School. She has a PGCE and has taught adults throughout her career. Her paintings have been exhibited at the National Portrait Gallery, she has won the Art’s Club Award at the Royal Society of Portrait Painters and her works are held in private and public collections such as Mansfield College, Oxford University.

She has been commissioned to paint the portraits of many high profile individuals and sells work locally through Sixteen Gallery in Cheltenham and Spencer House Gallery in Tetbury.