Learning through Painting

Reflections on how making supports learning in painting, drawn from the Freelands archives.

This audio reel collates reflections from previous talks run by Freelands, that continue to offer pertinent insights and strategies from artists, teachers and historians on how material exploration, with a focus on painting, interacts with the process of both learning and teaching.

Through their reflections, Rebecca Fortnum, Sean Kaye, Dr Ben Street, Sue Williams, Dougal McKenzie and Jenny Eden, explore questions including:

How does the act of making support artists and students to come up with ideas?
What can we learn through material engagement, that books and theory can not tell us?
How does creative practice inform one’s teaching practice?

There's always the need to go back to the painting and say, ‘Well, come on, let's have a look at the painting,’ and say, ‘What questions is the painting asking?’ Rather than, you know, ‘How can the painting answer questions?’

– Rebecca Fortnum

About the speakers

Jenny Eden is a painter, writer and lecturer based in Manchester. Jenny lectures in the BA and MA Painting programmes at Manchester School of Art and co-runs Oceans Apart, a gallery in Salford dedicated to contemporary painting.

Rebecca Fortnum is an artist, writer and academic. She is currently Associate Dean of Research at Central Saint Martins and her solo exhibition, ‘Les Praticiennes’, was exhibited at the Henry Moore Institute in 2023.

Sean Kaye is Joint Programme Leader for Contemporary Art Programme at British Higher School of Art & Design in Moscow and co-director of the exhibitions programme blip blip blip. He recently co-curated the exhibition cycle Fully Awake for the organisation Teaching Painting.

Dougal McKenzie is Lecturer in Painting at Ulster University, Belfast. He was a co-director in the early years of the Belfast artist-run organisation Catalyst Arts (1994-96) and has been a studio member at Queen Street Studios, Orchid Studios and PS² Studios in Belfast.

Dr Ben Street is an academic art historian with a particular interest in contemporary painting and its relationship with the art of the past. He lectures at the University of East Anglia and the University of Oxford, as well as many museums, including the National Gallery, the Royal Academy of Arts and the Wallace Collection.

Sue Williams is an artist and Programme Manager of Fine Art: Studio Site & Context at the University of Wales Trinity Saint David’s (UWTSD) Swansea College of Art.