MAUD LEWIS: Colour and Freedom

MAUD LEWIS: Colour and Freedom

✏️ Live Online Class: Saturday 30th August 2025 2pm BST

🍿 + 14 Days Recording Access

👋 Taught by Karolina Głusiec and hosted by Frances Stanfield

💸 Pay What You Can💻 Please book via a browser, not the Eventbrite app. Email us if you need help!

In this class for all levels, we’ll be drawing a still life, a portrait, a landscape, and some animals inspired by Lewis.

Maud Lewis was a Canadian folk artist whose colourful landscapes and memory paintings are bursting with life and joy.

She never attended art school. She created her work using whatever materials she had to hand, painting on wood offcuts and discarded household objects rather than expensive supplies.

Her work, including the iconic Three Cats, has become one of the most recognised and reproduced images in Canadian visual art. Her paintings have even been featured on postage stamps. The tiny, vibrant house she shared with her husband has been preserved as a museum object in Nova Scotia.

Despite living with arthritis and enduring lifelong poverty, Maud Lewis made art that radiated happiness. During her lifetime, she sold her paintings for as little as two dollars. Today, her work is sold by major auction houses to private collectors. This is an ironic twist, given the challenges she faced.

We’ll be watching a short documentary about her life together in class to get to know her story and her work. We’ll also shine a light on other self-made artists, including some living artists whose work Karolina will share during the session. This session also celebrates artists who create despite challenges, including disability or marginalisation.

This workshop is dedicated to self-taught artists. These are people who may not see themselves as “gallery artists” but make work because it’s meaningful to them. You’re invited to think about artists you know who are pursuing their creative path in spite of obstacles. Perhaps someone in your own life, or even yourself.

You will need:

We suggest the materials below but you can join with anything you have.

You can always invest / search for new materials after the class if you wish and draw along again with the recording access!

• Coloured pencils, crayons, or oil pastels, anything vibrant and colourful
• Watercolours, poster paint, or acrylic, whichever medium you feel comfortable using
• A dish for water and some tissues
• Thick paper or card. Feel free to get creative. Use what you have at home, like cardboard, paper cups, or packaging scraps
• Paintbrushes

This class is suitable for all levels!

Everyone is welcome to join this Pay-What-You-Can class

Tickets:

We suggest an amount of £20. However, we understand that may not be possible for everybody. Please be honest and pay what you can afford so that we may continue to offer our sessions on this basis whilst also giving our tutors a sustainable wage.

There is also a ticket option to "Pay It Forward" to support us and our students! We offer classes for free to those who can't afford the minimum amount (If this is you please email us to join for free). This continues to ensure our classes are available to everyone!

Once booked:

You will receive a confirmation email and be able to access information on how to join the event via your eventbrite "Online Event Page" You can access this by signing into eventbrite or creating an account using the email address that you booked with.

In the Class:

You can't be seen or heard in our classes, your audio and video are automatically turned off and there's no way these can be turned on. You can talk to us and others in the class in the chat box!

We love to see your drawings or anything else our classes inspire! You can share them with us by tagging us on instagram (@londondrawinggroup) or emailing us if you don't have socials.

About the Tutor:

Karolina Glusiec-A multidisciplinary artist based in Deptford, south-east London, UK whose practice emerges from drawing and animation branching out into mixed media, structural and site specific objects and artworks. She is also a teacher and runs dept.con.temporary art gallery together with Jamie Temple from their flat in London. She won Jerwood Drawing Prize in 2012.

ARE YOU TRYING TO BOOK VIA THE EVENTBRITE PHONE APP?!

We have been in touch with Eventbrite, and they have informed us that currently you cannot book tickets to online events in their app. It's very frustrating and we have been assured they are working on a solution. In the meantime, we recommend that you book tickets to our events outside of the iOS app - either via a web browser or a desktop. If you book our classes regularly we recommend deleting the eventbrite App.

IF YOU HAVE ANY PROBLEMS OR QUESTIONS PLEASE EMAIL :

hello@londondrawinggroup.com

And that's it!

We're really looking forward to you joining us.

Love,

LDG

Image by Karolina Głusiec