Tag: transformation

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That’s what you call transformation

Painting water at Schoodic workshop 2026. Photo courtesy Frank Costantino.

I told A. I’d send him information on easels when I was done with my August workshops.

Yesterday, he messaged me:

“When I came home from the workshop, I was so excited that I forgot that I should have waited to buy an easel. But I didn’t. In fact, I got one for going outside and one for my studio.”

He didn’t stop there. He turned his bigger bedroom into a painting studio, moved his bed into a much smaller room, and kept working on the painting he started during the workshop.

Then came this:

“Thank you so much for the great and perhaps transformative teaching. What a great week!”

That’s what you call transformation.

Not suddenly painting a masterpiece. Not suddenly becoming a different kind of artist. Transformation can be much more down-to-earth. In A.’s case, it meant coming home from a workshop and realizing that he wanted to paint badly enough to rearrange his house around it.

Learning to draw boats on the coast of Maine. Photo courtesy Frank Costantino.

Another true-love story

J. and T. stopped by to see me when I was painting in Camden last week. After that, they skipped off to Clark Island, where they went swimming. They’ve both ordered a drawing book I recommended because it’s really the next step in their painting evolution.

Anyone seeing them together would find it difficult to believe they were complete strangers a month ago. They were thrown together by chance at my Schoodic workshop and signed up for my October Color Clinic. “We’re both so motivated to learn and grow,” J told me yesterday.

That’s the part of teaching painting that I love.

Here’s another fine pair of my students, Mark from Texas and Beth from New York. They met up this summer to paint the verdant hills of the Genesee Valley.

What should you expect from a workshop?

A good workshop should give you more than a few pleasant days with your easel. You should come home seeing differently. You should understand something about your own process that you didn’t understand before. And, ideally, you should want to get back to work. If you don’t feel that fire in your gut, something’s wrong.

Color concepts at a picnic table. Photo courtesy Frank Costantino.

Color and composition aren’t academic exercises

Color and composition are the tools that let you turn what you see and feel into a compelling painting.

If color has always felt mysterious—if you find yourself mixing endlessly and still not getting the color you want—my Color Clinic is designed to help. We’ll dig into the relationships that make color work, rather than treating paint like a collection of magic recipes.

And if your paintings sometimes have all the right ingredients but still don’t quite hold together, take a look at Composition Week. Composition is where we learn to organize all those fascinating things we see into a painting that actually says something.

Neither class is about memorizing rules. Both are about learning the bedrock technique underlying great paintings. I want you to come home from studying with me and look at your easel differently. I want you to understand why a painting is working or not. I want you to have a process you can repeat when you’re standing in front of a blank canvas.

And yes, I want you to be excited enough to buy an easel before I can get around to sending you my recommendations.

That’s what you call transformation.

I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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Escape from Pleasantville

Mary Day on Camden Harbor, Cassie Sano, courtesy of the artist.

“I’ve escaped from Pleasantville,” Cassie Sano excitedly told our zoom class. “I’ve always been afraid to step out of Pleasantville, but now I’m exploring outside of it.

Later, I asked her about this transformation. “It’s not that my paintings were awful. I was just painting too tightly and too carefully with no detail left undefined,” she said. “They were pleasant, but somewhat boring. Afraid to step ‘out of bounds,’ my paintings reminded me of the movie Pleasantville, and I began to jokingly refer to them with that name.”

That’s a 1998 comedy about two siblings trapped in a 1950s sitcom, set in a small town populated by ‘perfect’ people.

Shadows and Tracks, Mount Vernon, Cassie Sano, courtesy of the artist.

“I left nothing to the imagination of the viewer. I wanted to get the heck out of Pleasantville, but I didn’t know how.”

Cassie is somewhat handicapped in that goal by being one of the most pleasant people I know. Behind her gentle demeanor, however, is a fiercely-fit single-mother and grandmother; she once bounded up Bald Mountain to keep me company while I was painting. And then bounded around the summit to keep herself amused.

She studied graphic design at Salem State University, Elementary Education at Boston College, and cartography and journalism in the military. “In 2018, I retired as a mail carrier for the US Postal Service, and then began focusing on my art. I spent a few years doing pottery, but then shifted to watercolor and oil painting, writing and illustrating picture books, and teaching watercolor painting to beginners.”

“When I first started painting with oils, I was focused on the technical aspects of painting– how to set up my palette, when to use Turpenoid or medium, how to apply the paint on the canvas, and effective use of values and composition. As I became more comfortable with these technical matters, I began to think beyond them.”

Corea Harbor, Cassie Sano, courtesy of the artist.

Transformation from journeyman to master

That makes sense; we must figure out technique before we can dig into meaning and expression. But at some point, technique becomes automatic and we start thinking about deeper issues.

Cassie’s most recent class with me was on bravura brushwork, and that seemed to be what she needed to get past literalism-especially the class where I asked her to paint like Vincent van Gogh. “I could feel myself loosening up and finally seeing how to sneak past Border Patrol… I felt a lot of joy after that class and shouted (to myself), ‘I finally get it!'”

“My goal is to continue practicing these techniques with an emphasis on making my paintings more exciting and joyful for the viewers, and leaving a lot to their imagination,” she told me.

Vienna Mountain Road, Cassie Sano, courtesy of the artist.

Cassie is represented by Eye Feast Art. She is a member of the Kennebec Valley Art Association, River Arts Gallery, and Maine Arts Gallery, and the organizer for the Kennebec Valley Plein Air Painters. In June, she will have a solo show at McLaughlin Garden and Homestead, 97 Main Street, South Paris, ME. The opening will be June 3 from 2-4 PM.

I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters