This 4-week course will focus on an Expressionist/Realist approach to painting portraits. A professional, portrait artist working in NYC for the past two decades, Antony Zito will guide each individual through their own paces in developing their sense of proportion, modeling and balance of expression in their work. The subjects will be live models – not photographs. They will learn the levels of communication involved in the very social art of live portrait painting and a light-hearted yet in-depth approach to the philosophy inherent in this work. The fundamentals of lighting and composition will be explored and each student will benefit from the formal discussion of the resulting artwork in regular critiques designed to promote positive and constructive evolution of the process. Zito’s direction is influenced in part by the old masters balanced with the gutsy, loose attack of the expressionists – balancing technique with soul. The goal is to achieve an accurate sense of proportion while engaging the artist’s individual visual language at the same time.
ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR
Zito is a portrait painter and long-time resident of New York's Lower East Side. The Village Voice has referred to him as "a master of the found object". He is a founding member of 4heads that spearheads the Annual Governors Island Art Fair in New York Harbor. His work has been shown in galleries throughout the US, Europe and Japan as well as museums in France. Zito's diverse portraits, murals and other artwork can be seen throughout New York as well as in Jim Jarmusch's films, "Coffee and Cigarettes" and "Broken Flowers". He ended 2009 with a speaking engagement at The Metropolitan Museum and began 2011 by starting work on semi-documentary film based in the Lower East Side.
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For questions contact Ellen Blum - Arts Education Programs Manager - edu@4heads.org
