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Past Classes
“Food for my head and soul…”
“Thank you for organizing such a meaningful experience!”
“Great practical advice and deep inspiring insights.”
“Thank you for creating the consummate art venue – very sophisticated and diverse. Kings Oaks is the ultimate treasure for our art community.”
I really enjoyed learning new techniques and am seeing things in new ways now!
Thank you. For opening up your home and barn and creating a space that welcomes and encourages all kinds of art making and makers.
-Workshop Participants
Present Moment, Timeless Stitches: Crewel Embroidery Techniques and Design with Vincent Moreno
April 7 – 8, 2025
Join French embroidery artist, guilder, and restorer Vincent Moreno in exploring the colorful world of crewel-work, a centuries-old form of decorative embroidery. A popular technique in 17th and 18th-century England and 18th-century America, crewel embroidery traditionally meant employing an array of stitches to depict floral motifs, trees of life, or stylized landscapes with birds and animals using woolen thread on linen twill fabric. Crewel work was used to decorate home furnishings, garments and accessories.
Crewel embroidery is a colorful and creative process that translates drawings into vivid and textural textiles. Inspired by historic patterns, participants are invited to design and create their own motif and sampler, or to bring a project of their own. Learn how to mount fabric onto a stretcher frame and hoop. Practice interpreting embroidery stitch instructions. Create your own design, transcribe it onto fabric, and select colors and stitches for your motif. Go home with an in-process design and all the materials and resources to continue at home.
About the Instructor
Vincent Moreno is a French gilder, restorer, and embroidery artist who lives and works in Rosemont, New Jersey and Rouzède, France. He studied installation work and sculpture at the Avignon School of Art and learned gilding and restoration from a master guilder in Lyon. Vincent taught himself embroidery and textile techniques and specializes in crewel embroidery techniques from the 17th and 18th centuries in England.
Following the Thread: Crewel Embroidery Techniques and Design with Vincent Moreno
Kings Oaks
March 22 – 23, 2025
Open to all levels, start or continue a project. Materials and light refreshments provided.
Join French embroidery artist, guilder, and restorer Vincent Moreno in exploring the colorful world of crewel-work, a centuries-old form of decorative embroidery. A popular technique in 17th and 18th-century England and 18th-century America, crewel embroidery traditionally meant employing an array of stitches to depict floral motifs, trees of life, or stylized landscapes with birds and animals using woolen thread on linen twill fabric. Crewel work was used to decorate home furnishings, garments and accessories.
Crewel embroidery is a colorful and creative process that translates drawings into vivid and textural textiles. Inspired by historic patterns, participants are invited to design and create their own motif and sampler, or to bring a project of their own. Learn how to mount fabric onto a stretcher frame and hoop. Practice interpreting embroidery stitch instructions. Create your own design, transcribe it onto fabric, and select colors and stitches for your motif. Go home with a completed or in-process design and all the materials and resources to continue at home.
About the Instructor
Vincent Moreno is a French gilder, restorer, and embroidery artist who lives and works in Rosemont, New Jersey and Rouzède, France. He studied installation work and sculpture at the Avignon School of Art and learned gilding and restoration from a master guilder in Lyon. Vincent taught himself embroidery and textile techniques and specializes in crewel embroidery techniques from the 17th and 18th centuries in England.
The Interior in Collage: A Painted Paper Collage Workshop with Rotem Amizur
Kings Oaks
March 13 – 16, 2025
Collage gives one the opportunity to paint without fear. It turns looking and composing into a playful game, where shapes of color are easily cut and moved. We will apply this freeing compositional approach to the domestic interior.
This workshop will take place in an historic house on the grounds of Kings Oaks farm with windows facing a tranquil forest. Participants will paint paper to create their own color palette. We will then observe the interior space around us as a playground. Infinite possibilities arise when we start seeing reality in simple shapes. Furniture and decor from different eras–chairs, sofas, lamps, paintings on the walls, and still life scenes of objects and flowers will inspire us to compose intimate scenes embodying “place”.
The interior as a subject in painting started relatively recently in art history. We will look at artists that took interest in this subject from then until now. The key thread between them all is that they observed reality and invented simultaneously. These artists were constantly looking and adjusting what they saw to create harmony. We too will play with looking and inventing, turning the mundane into something thrilling.
About the Instructor
Rotem Amizur (Art at Kings Oaks 2018, 2022) was born in NY in 1988 and currently lives and works in New York. She graduated from the Jerusalem Studio School Master Class in 2013. In 2009 and 2010, she participated in the Italy Master Class Programs instructed by Israel Hershberg, Stuart Shils and Ken Kewley. Rotem has taught painting and collage since 2014 and has given numerous workshops in Israel and the US. She is represented by Rothschild Fine Art Gallery, Tel Aviv. In 2023 she exhibited her first museum show at the Herzliya Museum of Contemporary Art and launched her first artist book that accompanied the show. Rotem has received the Henrion Award for painting from the Hampstead Art Society in London, and her work is part of private and public collections around the world.
Flowers in February: An Introduction to Crewel Embroidery Techniques and Design with Vincent Moreno
Kings Oaks
February 22 – 23, 2025
Join French embroidery artist, guilder, and restorer Vincent Moreno in exploring the colorful world of crewel-work, a centuries-old form of decorative embroidery. A popular technique in 17th and 18th-century England and 18th-century America, crewel embroidery traditionally meant employing an array of stitches to depict floral motifs, trees of life, or stylized landscapes with birds and animals using woolen thread on linen twill fabric. Crewel work was used to decorate home furnishings, garments and accessories.
Crewel embroidery is a very colorful and creative process that translates drawings into vivid and textural textiles. Inspired by historic patterns, participants are invited to design and create their own floral motif or sampler. You will learn how to mount fabric onto a stretcher frame, transcribe your design onto fabric, select colors and stitches, and create your own embroidered piece. Participants will go home with a stretcher frame, needle, sampler record of stitches learned, a unique embroidered design, and a simple frame and mat for display.
About the Instructor
Vincent Moreno is a French gilder, restorer, and embroidery artist who lives and works in Rosemont, New Jersey and Rouzède, France. He studied installation work and sculpture at the Avignon School of Art and learned gilding and restoration from a master guilder in Lyon. Vincent taught himself embroidery and textile techniques and specializes in crewel embroidery techniques from the 17th and 18th centuries in England.
Drawing Autumn From Inside Out: Color, Mood & Atmosphere with Mike Dowley
October 13, 2024
“I have always thought there was such beauty about a room even though there weren’t any people in it, perhaps precisely when there weren’t any.”
-Vilhelm Hammershoi
Artists such as Pierre Bonnard, Gwen John, Edward Hopper, Edouard Vuillard, Vincent Van Gogh, and Johannes Vermeer, have explored the concept of the interior space or room, as a way of communicating a sense of intimacy, comfort, subtle emotion and serenity.
In this intensive color drawing workshop, participants will work in and around an 1818 stone-and-clapboard guesthouse on the Kings Oaks grounds, learning how to capture the specific mood and atmosphere of the autumnal setting. Working in color pencil and crayon/pastel, students will develop their mark-making, color mixing and observational skills, learning properties of natural and artificial light, surface reflections, and dimensionality of everyday objects.
Participants will focus on building layered, color-rich drawings from a series of preparatory sketches and color mixing exercises, and will have the opportunity to explore both the interior and exterior structures of the guesthouse. Lessons around strategies of capturing expressive qualities through mark-making and color harmonies will be supported by instructor demonstrations and art historical images.
About the Instructor
Mike Dowley (Art at Kings Oaks 2019) is a native of the Washington, D.C. region and has taught painting, drawing and design at Georgetown University and at Northern Virginia Community College since 2010. He is currently Professor of Painting and Drawing at Northern Virginia Community College.
He has shown locally and nationally, most recently at Exeter Gallery (Baltimore), The Phillips Collection (Washington DC), St. Louis Artist Guild, MO, Art at Kings Oaks, Newtown, PA, Blue Spiral Gallery in Asheville, NC, Project V Gallery, NYC, and previously, at Arlington Arts Center, VA, DC Arts Center, Porch Projects (DC), Morton Fine Art, Visarts Rockville, Creative Arts Workshop, New Haven, CT, Atlantic Gallery, New York City, among others.
His work has been selected for exhibition by William Bailey (Yale University), Joan Young (Guggenheim Museum) and Matthew Higgs (White Columns).
He has been the recipient of artist residencies at Vermont Studio Center and Georgetown University. He studied Painting and Spanish as an undergraduate at Georgetown University and later received an MFA in painting at Savannah College of Art and Design.
Embracing Time in the Garden and Studio with Karlene Jean Kantner & Jennifer Walker
October 19, 2024
Join ceramic artist and gardener Karlene Jean Kantner and horticulturist, landscape designer, and educator Jennifer Walker for an immersive full-day workshop at Kings Oaks. Participants are invited to embrace slow time and intentional observation as an approach to creativity in the landscape and art-making. This experience aims to steer our habits as gardeners and creatives toward seeing time as a collaborator in our work. By reframing our relationship with time, we make room for a deeper relationship with the land, one another, creativity and ourselves.
Participants will be guided through the Kings Oaks landscape by Jennifer. Karlene will present an artist talk and gallery tour of works displayed in the Art at Kings Oaks exhibition. Group discussions and exercises will highlight the connections between art and nature, focusing on intention and co-creating with natural processes. The day will include hands-on explorations in clay, facilitated reflection, sketching, and writing. We will use hand tools inspired by 18th-century naturalists and artists.
Gardeners, naturalists, and artists alike will benefit from considering new ways of seeing and being, in conversation with one another and with the natural world. We will clarify our artistic intentions while drawing inspiration from and engaging with the evolving landscape around us.
About the Instructors
Karlene Jean Kantner (Art at Kings Oaks 2024) is a ceramic artist and pupil of the garden. Her studio practice begins at the work table and expands to the firing, to the potting bench, to the landscape, and then to the seed. Karlene holds a Bachelors of Fine Art in Ceramics from the University of Montana where she received honors for community arts engagement and teaching. She was a recent artist in residence at the Flower City Arts Center in Rochester, NY and now resides and works in her studio in western Massachusetts. Her work is in the permanent collection of the Montana Museum of Art and Culture and has most recently shown in a solo exhibition at the Berkshire Botanical Gardens. Currently, Karlene lives and works at Bark Mill Pond in the Berkshires where she continues her research in a land and garden based ceramic practice. Learn more…
Jennifer Walker is a landscape designer, arborist, and educator dedicated to creating meaningful connections between nature and human communities. Her work blends artistic vision with technical expertise in the natural world. She holds a BS in Horticulture from NC State University and a Master of Landscape Architecture from the University of Georgia. Currently, she teaches in the Sculpture Department at Saint Joseph’s University and the Barnes Horticultural Certificate Program. Through her firm, Poiesis Design and Planning, she leads projects that shape the built environment with thoughtful, collaborative interventions for campus, municipal, and residential clients. Learn more…
An Introduction to Hindustani Painting with Murad Khan Mumtaz
October 8, 2022
Traditionally trained artist and art historian Murad Khan Mumtaz (Art at Kings Oaks 2022) will introduce students to the technique and imagery of Hindustani painting.
This one-day workshop is designed to introduce the materials and techniques of this art form. The workshop will focus on the practice of copying from masterworks from major historical schools of Indian art. Participants will be introduced to paper and pigment preparation, as well as the basics of traditional drawing and painting techniques. The workshop will focus on the siah qalam brush and ink rendering technique, the backbone for the more advanced techniques of neemrang and gadrang, which pertain to color application. Open to all, no previous experience required. Partial need-based scholarships are available.
Drawing as the Beginning of Presence with Stuart Shils
October 2, 2022
A one-day drawing experience at Kings Oaks with Philadelphia painter and teacher Stuart Shils (Art at Kings Oaks 2022, 2017
This workshop frames drawing as the beginning of presence – the critical thought-engine behind design, painting, photography and anything involving the construction of form. We will explore observation as the foundation of drawing, ushering your eyes more deeply into paying closer attention. Tune up the immediacy and depth of how you see and feel the visual moment.
Looking out onto the world, what and how do you notice? Are you seeing your surroundings as defined by labels, or can you begin to see abstract relationships—size, shape, and tone? Once you’ve flexed your abstract relational seeing muscles, how do you make sense of what you see and translate that into a graphic language? Learn how to become your own visual narrator. Drawing is how you tell that perceptual story. It is the roadmap into the emergent conversation between nature, your eye, your hand, and the paper.
You need not call yourself an artist to take part in this fast-paced and dynamic workshop. It is open to anyone who longs for a more holistic visual experience. Leave with an altered state of mind, eye, and hand. Regardless of where you are now, your inner eye will never be quite the same.
Monotype Printing in the Studio and Field – No Press Needed with John David Wissler
October 19, 2019
Explore the expressive and personal medium of hand-printed monotypes in the field at Kings Oaks. Open to all experience levels and backgrounds.
Painted Paper Collage Workshop with Rotem Amizur
October 13 – 14, 2018
In this workshop, we will explore how to create a feeling of light and composition through paper. Even if you have never collaged, after “seeing” with collage, you come back to regular studio practice in a new and fresh way. Collage stimulates us to realize shape and color as one, to reference Matisse who said he was drawing as he cut through his colored paper.
Read Irene Tatariw Trindles blog post about her experience in the workshop.
Monotype Printing in the Studio and Field – No Press Needed with John David Wissler
October 20, 2018
Enjoy the history and beauty of the setting at Kings Oaks as we explore the painterly method of hand-pressed monotypes. Using simple materials and tools, we will join the likes of Degas, Prendergast, and Nelligan, interpreting what we see, what we observe, and creating images. Open to everyone.
Read Lauren Kindle’s blog about her experience in the workshop.
Artists in Conversation – Panel Discussion
October 21, 2018
Art at Kings Oaks’ 2018 exhibition closing-day panel discussion featured 2018 artists Linda Brenner, Martina Johnson-Allen, Aubrey Levinthal, Ron Prigat, and Robert Winokur, with Stuart Shils (Art at Kings Oaks 2017) facilitating. Attended by over 50 guests and live-streamed to an online audience, this conversation explored the inner life of the artist in the studio and the challenges of balancing public perception with making.
