Advanced painting: practice and discourse

Clare Barton-Harvey is a full time artist and tutor/trainer living in London. In her teaching, she specialises in life drawing, drawing and mindfulness, working with colour, and painting from the imagination. She is an engaging and inspired tutor responsive to individual need and encouraging of individual growth/expression. In 2003, she studied at the Royal Drawing School, where she engaged in life drawing and the study of contemporary and historic artist’s drawings as part of the Drawing Year. In 2017 she engaged in post-graduate study with Bob and Roberta Smith (RA) and has exhibited solo and in a variety of group shows throughout the UK. You can see her work at www.cbarton-harvey.co.uk. Clare has been a practicing artist & mindfulness practitioner for over 25 years, and has taught drawing and painting for over 18 years, in a variety of locations currently including the National Gallery, British Museum, British Library, Pallant House and Hampton Court Palace. She is also co-founder of LIMINA collective (www.liminacollective.com) who specialise in mindful engagement with art in galleries and museums.

Sam Hanner is a contemporary artist and educator living and working in london. He studied BA Fine Art at Goldsmiths, University of London and graduated from the MA Painting course at the Royal College of Art in 2021. He has previously worked at the Royal Drawing School and The King's Foundation where he is currently a core tutor on the Foundation Diploma in Fine and Applied Art. He started working at City Lit in September 2024 having studied towards a PGCE in Further Education. He is motivated by faciliitating a process based dialogue with students of Fine Art, Painting and Drawing and enabling their practices to flourish. Their practice revolves around Painting and Drawing and investigates the place of these practices in the world today, and as a discipline within contemporary art. Previous projects and exhibitions have explored the history and future of wetlands in the UK, specifically the Fens, where he completed a three month artist residency. Sam has worked as a scenic artist for theatre, opera and ballet, a studio technician and an art installer and brings this technical knowledge and experience to his work and his workshops.

Michael Harding was born in Canada, where he studied cinema and photography at Concordia University, Montréal, before moving to the UK. Since then, he has created striking images of architecture, art, people and landscapes for international blue-chip clients for their use in editorial, advertising and corporate applications. Michael’s work has won many industry awards, notably being selected in the Eleventh Association of Photographers Awards and further receiving a Merit Award in the Seventeenth Association of Photographers Awards. His work was selected for a Highly Commended Award in the Deutsche Bauzeitung “Visions in Architecture” European Architectural Photography prize. His work has been exhibited in both the United Kingdom and Canada. Michael has been Chairman, as well as President, of the Association of Photographers (AOP). The AOP is Europe’s most established organisation for professional photographers, working to ensure greater recognition for all professional photographers, as well as working to positively influence legislators in the UK and Europe for the benefit of all photographers.

Stuart Jones has been teaching painting and drawing for 17 years, predominantly on the Foundation Diploma in Art and Design course at London College of Fashion and at Oaklands College in St Albans. He studied Fine Art at Leeds Metropolitan University and has been practicing as an artist for over twenty years. He is a painter working mainly in oil paint and mixed media on canvas. His work is informed by the urban and rural landscape and ideas of utopia, dystopia and the sublime. He is currently a fellow at Digswell arts and was shortlisted for the Beep Painting Prize (2022), John Moores Painting Prize (2020) and awarded the Contemporary Arts Trust Prize (2019). Stuart exhibits nationally, has work in numerous private collections and his work has been loaned to MGM Studios, Paramount British Pictures and the BBC. For more information please visit: https://www.stuartjonesartist.co.uk https://www.instagram.com/stujonesartist/

Mario Lautier Vella is a cross-disciplinary, award-winning artist who began his art career at City Lit. After completing a number of short courses in drawing, painting, printmaking, sculpture and textiles, Mario went on to do the two-year City Lit Fine Art course before going back to university to gain his Masters degree. Mario regularly exhibits in the UK and abroad and his work can be found in private collections around the world. Mario has enjoyed teaching at City Lit since 2011. For more info go to mariolautiervella.com

Joe Richardson is a multi-disciplinary artist working in painting, drawing, collage, video, print and sculpture. Since graduating from his MA in Fine Art at Central Saint Martins in 2018, Joe has worked regularly taught at Foundation and Undergraduate level as well as working with Under 18s. Joe is dedicated to encouraging learners to discover new creative approaches to making, exploring their own interests in relation to art and design, and teaching methods and techniques that help to form the foundation of students' creative careers. Joe has undertaken residencies in Beijing, China and Stokkoya, Norway to develop his collaborative and flexible practice. He currently has a permanent collection of video works on display at Universal Music, Four Pancras Square, and has recently held a solo show at CineWindow Winsford and a duo exhibition at FIVE YEARS, London.

Benjamin Senior is a London-based professional artist and teacher specialising in painting and drawing and colour. His teaching practice is driven by his extensive research in to the practical history of painting, often focusing on techniques of the past such as egg tempera and Old Master methods of painting. In his painting practice Benjamin Senior has exhibited nationally and internationally since graduating from MA Painting at the Royal College of Art in 2010, opening exhibitions in New York, Milan, Zurich, and Dubai including the Hayward Gallery Touring exhibition Slow Painting (2019-20). In 2016 he was one of the official printmaking artists of Team GB during the Rio Olympic Games. Committed to bringing an accessible and enlivening approach to painting tuition, teaches in institutions across London including Dulwich Picture Gallery, UAL Camberwell College of Arts, Working Men’s College and City Lit.

Ian is a cultural theorist and creative practitioner, with 15 years experience of teaching & managing in the areas of contemporary art, critical, cultural and communication theory, and art history. Ian has taught at City Lit for over 10 years, and has previously been Programme Manager for the Foundation Diploma in Art & Design and Art History departments, and Head of School for the Humanities & Sciences. Ian's current interests include creative learning and transformative education; contemporary art and theory; and mental health in relation to education and the arts. Alongside his teaching and management work, Ian is an arts based life coach, creative practioner and poet, and is currently training in Arts Psychotherapy.