Sarah Wimperis talking and teaching about how Van Gogh paints

A big shout out to my friend Sarah Wimperis who was the artist commenting on the Official Audio Guide to Van Gogh in Britain at Tate Britain - and talking about the Van Gogh paintings and how they are painted.

All the people with the headsets on are listening to Sarah Wimperis
commenting on how Van Gogh painted this painting - Starry Night (Arles, August 1888)

I finally got to see the exhibition last week having only just realised in time that it was about to finish!  (I hate the crowds at the beginning and have to endure the crowds at the end when I forget to make a date to go after the beginning and well before the end!)

I posted the above photo to my FB account and Sarah commented with Those people with headphones are listening to me!

I thought she did brilliantly - highlighting aspects of the painting which just don't come through when curators or critics talk about them. 

What I liked was she talked about how careful he was - in terms of the colours used and his brushwork.

For example, in relation to the Starry Night Painting (Arles 1888), the caption, by the curator says one thing

While Sarah - on the Audio Guide - is talking about LOOKING at:

• how many different blues he has used for the sky to demonstrate that a sky is not always a flat colour
• how he has always made sure his brush marks reflect the contours or form of the object he is painting e.g. the broad brush marks for the ripples in the water are all horizontal

LOOK AT: the various colours used in the night sky and the horizontal brush marks he made for the water

That's because she spent several months in 2017 painting 788 paintings exactly like Van Gogh for the total of 65,000 needed for the film 'Loving Vincent'! (see example of four frames).

Sarah was the only English artist out of 125 artists from all over the world - and hence a natural choice for the audio guide!

You can see something of what she did on her website - on the Loving Vincent page

Learn to paint like Van Gogh

Having learned an awful lot about how Van Gogh painting, Sarah now includes tuition for those who would also like to paint like Van Gogh in her portfolio of painting workshops. 

Check out the workshops section of her website for more details. 

I just rang her to tell her about this blog post and she tells me that her tuition dates for next year will be going online within the next week!

In the meantime she is providing painting tuition in oil and gouache on painting holidays and workshops this year in:

• Provence - August 31st - September 7th 2019
• Norfolk - September 22nd - 26th 2019 - already sold out