Teacher Workshop—Plein Air Painting

Saint Louis Art Museum is hosting a Teacher Workshop on Saturday, October 24, that pairs a guided tour with a painting session. It's built for teachers, but the two halves of the morning work together: you start with the art and end by making some of your own.

The first part is a tour of Women Impressionists and the Land, led by curator Simon Kelly. He'll walk you through the exhibition, which brings together works by women painters of the Impressionist era who focused on landscapes. It's the kind of tour where you get the context behind the paintings—who these artists were and how they approached the land—rather than just looking at them on the wall. If you're a teacher, it's a good way to see how a museum organizes a specific theme around a group of artists.

After the tour, the focus shifts from looking to doing. You'll move into a plein air watercolor painting session led by Mary Dee Schmidt. Plein air is just the French term for painting outdoors, so you'll be taking your brushes and paints outside to work from life. Schmidt will lead the session, and the idea is to take what you've just seen in the gallery and put it into practice with your own watercolors. It's a full arc in one morning: a curator's look at the work, then a working artist guiding you through the process.

The workshop runs on Saturday, October 24, starting at 10 AM at the Saint Louis Art Museum, One Fine Arts Drive, St. Louis, MO 63110. It's free to attend.