Emergence: Nature's Resiliency

Artist/Instructor: Jennifer Koury
Saturday’s September 28 and October 12
Time: 10:30 AM – 1:30 PM
Fee: $90 members/$110 not-yet members (for both workshops)

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With each new season comes rebirth of growth patterns, and the renewal of life. Charles Burchfield recognized that even during winter, trees and plants are sleeping, and using their dormancy to gather strength for spring's thaw. Burchfield had a unique relationship and appreciation for the vitality of nature, and the determination of the four seasons to shape our daily interaction with weather and nature's surroundings. Inspired by Burchfield's recently acquired masterpiece, Retreat of Winter, paint the flowing waterways, the trickle of snow melting, or the bursting force of ice cracking and rushing down the brook. Paint the shapes of rocks eroded by water and ice. Discover nature's vitality as seeds are carried by water, wind, birds, and animals to be planted. Paint the bursting tree seedlings, and the smell of meadow flowers creating our vital canopy of foliage, that supports all life. Using water, wind, seeds, plants, growth, and perfumes of emerging plants, paint your unique interpretation of nature, inspired by Burchfield's, Retreat of Winter.

Retreat of Winter by Charles E. Burchfield represents the artist’s culmination of his lifelong quest to depict nature’s vitality, especially the change of seasons from winter’s icy grip to spring’s welcome regeneration. The masterwork is dated 1950-64 to document that it contains a painting made in 1950 called Song of the Brook, which was enlarged to 40 x 60 inches and completed fourteen years later. An even earlier version of Song of the Brook dates to 1917, Burchfield’s self-proclaimed “golden year” when the art school graduate produced a large body of experimental, expressive works, many containing personal symbols called “Conventions for Abstract Thoughts,” as well as audio-cryptograms to represent the sounds. One of his “Noisy Spring Brook” sketches contains the notation: “The noise of the brook falls resounds [throughout] the woods— everything is saturated & influenced by it— The only true realism – gives the sound & smell as well as sight.” Burchfield articulated authentic memories of his experiences so viewers can relive the scenes in all their sensory dimensions.

Jennifer Koury
Jennifer Koury is a Buffalo-based artist, freelance illustrator, and arts educator. She instructs for The Roycroft Campus, Springville Center for the Arts, and the Burchfield Penney Art Center’s International Center for Watercolor. Jennifer has taught a weekly series of watercolor workshops inspired by Suddenly I Awoke: The Dream Journals of Charles E. Burchfield. She is represented by Meibohm Fine Arts, East Aurora, NY. In 2022, her works were featured in Luminance, a four-person watercolor exhibit at Meibohm Fine Arts. In 2023, Koury’s plein air paintings inspired by Emery Park’s old growth forest were highlighted in a two-person exhibition Whose Woods These Are at Springville Center for the Arts. She has exhibited her paintings in both solo and group shows, and won awards, including being finalist in the Chautauqua Annual Exhibition of Contemporary Art. Her art is featured in the NFWS Mary Whyte Gallery Walk video, George Washington's Mount Vernon Visitor Center, and Yuma Regional Medical Center in Arizona. Her illustrations appear in many children's books as well as volumes for adults. She is a member of the Buffalo Society of Artists, and a signature member of the Niagara Frontier Watercolor Society. She holds degrees in painting and printmaking from Virginia Commonwealth University, Virginia and Art Center College of Design, California. 

Supplies for participants to bring:

1. Inspire your painting with samples from nature, and bring photo reference, sketches and ideas to create your unique interpretation of the resiliency and sounds of nature, and the four seasons.

2. Drawing paper, graphite pencils, erasers, and transfer/tracing paper if you want to use these for sketching and composition.

3. Palette, your favorite brushes and water container

4. Watermedia paints of your choice

5. 100% Rag Paper or watermedia board, and backing board or table easel

For Further information please contact Kathy Shiroki: shirokkg@buffalostate.edu