Barbara Fugate – Unleashing Color: Rembrandt, Cezanne, The Impressionists (Online); Wednesdays, August 5-18, 2026

This class is part of Barbara Fugate’s Color Explorations, Artist by Artist series. Supply List Medium: Applicable to artists working in all mediums Level: All levels welcome Class Dates: Wednesdays, August 5-19, 2026 Class Times: • 11:00 am-1:30 pm Pacific time • 2:00 pm-4:30 pm Eastern time • 7:00 pm-9:30 pm UK time This three-session class explores the unleashing of color from the constraints of traditional value-based painting technique established during the Renaissance, to the color innovations of Cezanne and the Impressionists. By the turn of the 20th century, color reins, with new ways to compose and express using vivid and dynamic colors! You’ll make sketchbook color studies in the manner of each artist using a variety of media, including gouache, watercolor, artist crayons, and color pencils. Your subject matter will vary depending on the artist being studied, including still life and portrait. A brief description of the focus for each session’s color experiments: 1. Rembrandt, “Value before Color”. Rembrandt, a baroque artist, made dramatically lit portrait paintings that appear sculpted with paint using the traditional value-based painting technique. His expressive portrait paintings present the human condition with high contrast lights and darks, punctuated by a limited color palette. 2. Cezanne, “Color before Value”. Paul Cezanne rejected the traditional method of value-based painting by exploring color as a means to express how he perceived the natural world in still lifes, portraits and landscapes. Cezanne’s revolutionary painting innovations continue to influence generations of artists to this day. 3. Impressionists, “Color as Light”. Monet, Morisot, and Pissarro made Impressionist paintings that investigated how color is perceived as light bouncing off the surface of things, using vivid colors made with fleeting brushwork. Above all, they aimed to capture the transient effects of light and atmosphere rather than copying the local color of an object.