2026 May 30 & 31 10 am-4 pm EST @Townend Atelier instructor: Mia Bergeron A great follow-up to Oil Painting for Beginners or Oil Painting 2 with Mia Bergeron, though not necessary, this class will continue building on the strong foundations of learning to oil paint, but with added nuances and challenges. Students will work with a limited palette from a more complex still life. Mia will guide students through composition, re-entering a painting, planning drying layers, and how to work with lost edges in a painting . Some experience with oil paint is recommended. Click here for materials list About the Instructor: B.1980 Mia Bergeron is a classically trained oil painter that uses modern techniques and concepts to create layered imaginative works. Imagery in her work often oscillates between the fictitious and the observed in equal parts. Rooted in her upbringing in New York City with continuous exposure to modern art, her paintings also reveal her choice to study classical painting in Florence, Italy under Charles H. Cecil in her twenties. For Mia, painting is about an experiential cohabitation; we are driving in our car, seeing landscapes, people, stoplights, and trees- but we are also thinking about places far away, imagined outcomes, wild and mysterious fantasies . We are a species that lives in two places at all times- internally and externally. It is this dynamic contrast that is at the center of Mia’s paintings. Mia has been published numerous times in international magazines. In January 2024, her painting was published in The New Yorker Magazine alongside writer Joy Williams’ short story. Her painting “Tranquil Ghosts” was the cover image for the January 2022 issue of American Art Collector Magazine. Her work is part of Bennett Collection of Women at the Muskegon Museum of Art, and also in the permanent collection of the New Salem Museum of Art. She continues to teach and exhibit her work throughout the United States and Europe. She and her husband, artist John McLeod, live in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
