WELCOME TO MAPLEWOOD ARTS
Art Lessons for Beginners through Advanced Students
The ability to create amazing art, and communicate what is in your mind's eye, is not a gift one is born with. Instead it is a skill that is developed and honed with quality art education and practice. By breaking down artistic training into easy to understand principles that build slowly and logically upon each other, we are able to deliver unparalleled results to students in a relatively short time.
This approach demystifies the creative process making it accessible to anyone wishing to develop a high level artistic proficiency.
Below is an example of beginner level drawing students after four to five months of instruction. Please visit the Student Gallery to view additional examples of student work at all levels in painting, drawing, fashion design and illustration.
HOW IT WORKS
“Art is not what you see, but what you make others see.” - Edgar Degas.
Everyone is born understanding how to create and read visual images, but somewhere along the way we forget, or decide we don't know 'how'.
Not knowing ‘how’ to achieve their envisaged creative output is the number one cited reason young artists become frustrated and quit before they’ve even really begun. Maplewood Arts was founded to provide solid skills-based training, promote visual literacy, and to advance the understanding that great art begins with great themes expressed through mastery. We believe that students who are taught how to master skills and media, and then how to apply those skills to convey meaning produce work that is uniquely personal, immediately contemporary, exceptionally engaging, and bridges the gap between what they see in their mind’s eye and the work they’ve created. Taken together these principles encourage creativity, self-confidence, and critical thinking.
Classes meet once a week for 90 minutes. Tuition is charged on a monthly basis. Students may start and stop at anytime.
"Inspiration is for amateurs. The rest of us just show up and get to work. If you wait around for the clouds to part and a bolt of lightning to strike you in the brain, you are not going to make an awful lot of work. All the best ideas come out of the process; they come out of the work itself."