Photography for the Painter: Creating Your Best Visuals Workshop: Second in Barton’s “Lunch and Lecture” Art Seminar Series

WILSON, N.C. — “Photography for the Painter: Creating Your Best Visuals Workshop,” the second seminar in a new “Lunch and Lecture Series” hosted by the Barton College Friends of Visual Arts, will be held on Thursday, Dec. 6, from 10 a.m. until 4 p.m. Barton’s professor emeritus of art and artist-in-residence J. Chris Wilson will lead the seminar.

The “Lunch and Lecture” cost is $10 for Friends of Visual Art members and $20 for non-members. To register as a Friend of Visual Arts, you may visit www.barton.edu/culturalarts. To make reservations, contact Bonnie LoSchiavo by phone at 252‐399‐6477 or email artgalleries@barton.edu. An RSVP is required for lunch reservations.

“Technology and painting have been intimately connected for more than 600 years, and many painters, like their forerunners, depend on the camera to capture images to develop into their paintings,” explains Wilson. “While the camera is a tool of choice by many artists, there are some important issues with differences between how the camera records and how the eye sees that can be addressed and overcome.”

This workshop will present the issues both pro and con about the use of photography to create paintings, the limitations of the camera processes for the painter, and the potential working relationship between the two. There will also be examples of historical and contemporary photographs presented that were formative in the creation of paintings.

Additional topics to be addressed during the workshop will include the importance of lighting, the color limitations of photographic output for the painter, and the transformative process from photograph to painting. Post-photographic digital manipulation will be discussed and issues of artistry versus technology will be covered. The ethical and legal issues of copyright surrounding the use of photographs will also be covered during the seminar. Participants are encouraged to bring three to five photographic images that they have saved either on a thumb drive or a CD for group discussion and critique.

Wilson, having served on the Barton College faculty for 38 years, was named professor emeritus of art in spring 2012. With a passion for bringing art into the community, he has been involved in symposia, community presentations, and publications on art, decorative arts, and historic preservation. Wilson has also served on the boards of the Edgecombe County Cultural Arts Council, the Arts Council of Wilson, the Board of Advisors for Preservation/NC. He currently serves on the board of the Blount Bridgers Museum/Hobson Pittman Memorial Foundation and the Board of Directors of Preservation/NC.

Most recently, he is working on a 100-painting series “From Murphy to Manteo—An Artist’s Scenic Journey” of which several works are currently on view at the North Carolina Museum of History in Raleigh.

He earned a Master of Fine Arts degree from the University of Georgia, where he also completed post-graduate work, with Lamar Dodd as his major professor. He has exhibited throughout the Southeast and all across North Carolina. Wilson’s art is represented in numerous public and private collections in the United States, especially in the Southeast, and in England, Japan and Saudi Arabia.

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