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Sketching Movement with Curtis Holder, Suzy Willson and Fukiko Takase

Join celebrated UK artist Curtis Holder for a one-day workshop focussed on drawing moving bodies.

Sketching Movement is a chance to reinvigorate your artistic practice and bring bold aesthetic choices into your work. Ideal for those who love drawing and mark-making, participants will work alongside Holder as well as our Artistic Director Suzy Willson and dancer Fukiko Takase.

The morning session will consist of technique- and skills-sharing among the group. Participants can then put the morning’s learning into practice in the afternoon session, creating dynamic movements and images to capture on paper.

Materials will be provided by Clod Ensemble.

Curtis Holder (born Leicester, 1968) is a London-based artist who works primarily in graphite and coloured pencil to create large-scale portraits and figurative works on paper.

Taking inspiration from intimate conversations with the people he draws, Holder’s multilayered pencil portraits are dynamically tender, emerging in a wayward series of febrile lines to reveal a sense of his subjects’ form, movement and emotional intent. Preliminary pencil marks remain on the paper as part of his energetic process of capturing fleeting gestures and emotions with sensitivity and raw honesty.

In 2020 Holder won Sky Arts Portrait Artist of the Year, a prestigious portraiture competition televised in the UK. Impressed by his distinctive visual language, the panel of judges described his work as ‘magical […] courageous and startlingly new’. Garnering further critical acclaim and awards for his work ongoing since winning Sky Arts’ competition, Holder has exhibited widely in the UK and in Paris. His work is held in private and public collections including the National Portrait Gallery, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, Soho House and the National Theatre where he became the first ever artist in residence in 2022.

Holder studied Graphic Design at Kingston University and completed postgraduate studies in Character Animation at Central Saint Martins, London. He is a member of Contemporary British Portrait Painters (CBPP) and an Associate Member of the Society of Graphic Fine Art (SGFA).

Bursaries

We are able to offer fully-subsidised bursary places to three attendees of this workshop. These places are primarily designed to allow people on low incomes to attend. This includes, but is not limited to, low-waged/unwaged attendees and those in receipt of benefits.

If you would like to inquire about taking a bursary place, please get in touch with us directly by emailing fred@clodensemble.com before Sunday 11th February. Successful candidates will be contacted after this date.

 

Accessibility

This event is wheelchair accessible. Further information about access to Clod Ensemble’s studios will be emailed to attendees in advance of the event. If you have accessibility requirements that you would like us to be aware of then please email fred@clodensemble.com and we will do our best to help.

Image credits: both Cameron Slater

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