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Personal Color: Painting the Figure with a Mixing Matrix A 3-day Intensive Workshop with Neil Callander

Type: Residencies, Workshops, Exchanges [View all]
Posted by: Manifest Drawing Center
Deadline: Thu, July 24th, 2025

Personal Color: Painting the Figure with a Mixing Matrix
A 3-day Intensive Workshop with Neil Callander

Workshop  Runs: July 25 - 27, 2025  (Friday - Sunday)

This immersive three-day workshop invites artists to explore the expressive potential of figure painting beyond traditional representation. Through guided exercises, engaging slide lectures, and focused critique sessions, participants will examine how a painted figure can communicate meaning that extends beyond physical likeness or identity. The figure will be considered through a range of imaginative lenses: as loosely-bound stardust, a structure of dynamic volumes, a presence interacting with its environment, and a metaphor open to interpretation.

Participants will build their own artistic voice by developing and mastering a personalized limited palette. Using a structured color-mixing matrix, you will complete a series of small-scale paintings from live models, emphasizing the dynamic relationship between color, form, and mark-making. The workshop will also explore the concept of “resolution” in figurative painting—what it means and how to achieve it through a range of technical and conceptual approaches.

Neil Callander is a painter and educator originally from Louisville, Kentucky. He earned his BFA from Indiana University in 2003 and his MFA from the Mason Gross School of the Arts at Rutgers University in 2006. In 2005, he was awarded a full fellowship to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. After graduate school, he worked as a painter in Jeff Koons’ New York studio.

In 2007, Neil and his family left New York City to pursue careers in the arts and academia, a move that led them on a journey through the American South, with time spent in Louisville, Kentucky; Starkville, Mississippi; and Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Today, Neil and his wife, Adrienne, are both tenured professors of art at the University of Arkansas. They live in Fayetteville on a three-acre homestead shared with their children, dogs, and sheep.

Neil’s work has been exhibited extensively across the U.S., including solo exhibitions at Goose Barnacle (Brooklyn, NY), Studio Break Gallery (West Chicago, IL), Bowling Green State University (OH), Manifest Gallery and Drawing Center (Cincinnati, OH), Elon University (NC), and the Kentucky School of Art (Louisville, KY). His group exhibitions include shows at Manifest Gallery, the Huntsville Museum of Art (AL), the Mississippi Museum of Art (Jackson), the New Gallery of Modern Art (Charlotte, NC), First Street Gallery (NYC), and the Washington Art Association (CT), among others.

He has lectured on his work at numerous institutions, including Boston University, UMass Dartmouth, Arkansas State University, and the University of Mississippi. Neil is a member of ZEUXIS, a New York-based still life painting collective, and regularly attends conferences held by SECAC (Southeastern College Art Conference).

Most recently, Neil has been involved with Art Week at the historic home of painter Fairfield Porter on Great Spruce Head Island in Maine. He participated in the program in 2022 and returned in 2024 and 2025 to lead a painting retreat he developed.

Level of Study: This workshop is ideal for artists with foundational experience in live model drawing and painting. Participants should possess basic color theory knowledge and color mixing skills. An openness to experimental approaches and collaborative learning is essential.

Posted on Thu, June 26th, 2025
Expires on Thu, July 24th, 2025

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