The Mentoring/Coaching Program

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Level 2

Background

This program began in 2005 as a series of monthly meetings with a small group of people. We followed this with a workshop on design in spring 2006. In summer 2006, both of us taught courses for the Wellington County Museum in Elora Ontario. This latter experience generated additional insight into and ideas for improving the program. We continue to get new ideas to refine the program from our personal work and experience as well as from the experience with each new group and the individuals in it.

Who We Are

Mary Nunn is a successful professional artist with both commercial and fine art careers. She has exhibited widely, internationally and has been teaching for over twenty years, for colleges, boards of education and various other institutions as well as giving her own workshops. Ian Nunn is a retired computer scientist and painter who has taught in both college and institutional venues.

Mentoring as We See It

Almost all courses on art are about technique: how to paint a tree, how to use acrylic mediums, how to achieve texture with stamps, etc. As artists grow, however, the core issues are found to be much more complex. They manifest in a series of questions such as:

  1. What is my personal style?
  2. What do I have to say?
  3. Where do I go from here?
  4. How do I express my feelings in paint?
  5. How do I know if my work is good?
  6. How do I know if a piece is finished?

And many more such questions. These are the issues this program is designed to help the participant address.

Elements of the Program

This program should be beneficial to artists of all levels. We will not discuss technique unless there is a specific request around some issue. We will not be painting, but reserve the right to introduce exercises as we feel such may be useful. There will be opportunity for both individual and group critique of the work of both participants and instructors (we are far from perfect).

We provide extensive written material to support the objectives of each meeting.

There will be homework, both assigned to the group and also to the individual as we see the usefulness of such. In fact, homework will be assigned for discussion in the first meeting.

Proposal

The program will consist of 4 monthly meetings of about 3 hours duration. From experience we limit group size to 5 people since personal attention is crucial. Meetings are held at our house. We include as an extra outing such as a gallery visit since such is usually extremely informative.

We generally prefer afternoon sessions either weekday or weekend. We find an evening session too demanding on people who have worked all day. For information, contact us by email.

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