ABOUT ME | sebastianaplin

Through all of my working life I’ve either been painting or teaching, and so now I’m very happy that I’m doing both. The practice of preparing to teach makes me constantly re appraise of the way I paint.

I spent several years in a paint and printmaking workshop in southern Mexico and three years on a Fine Art MA at the University of the West of England. More recently I have run courses from various studios in Cardiff and have taught at Cardiff Open Art School since 2015. The covid pandemic has now has set me on a technological odyssey that I have found both absorbing and very rewarding.

I believe that painting techniques can be learnt by anyone with an open mind, but it does require a change in the way you look at things. What I really want to put across is the positive approach to painting that will get results “its not what you do, it’s the way that you do it”. I’m very interested in the psychology of teaching painting, especially dealing with the cognitive blocks that make painting so hard for the logical mind. Since I spend a lot of time in my own practice reflecting on how good paintings are made, it is not hard to empathise with the struggles students have in their paintings. What is so interesting about painting is that you learn so much from seeing other people approach a subject in a way that often triggers a new experiment in your own way of working.

There is a lot of great online material out there for painters already and I didn’t feel that I wanted to add to that, what I really wanted was to regain a sense of artistic community. I feel that virtual zoom meetings are the closest thing to building up that great atmosphere that painting courses generate, so I decided to host my own.

I’m also looking at possible venues for physical workshops that might grow out of the Zoom watercolour lessons as there will always be a need for both.