A love of art and nature guides these weekly meetings which we host. Through intuitive, compassionate, opened hearts, we look at each other's work and at others that interest and attract us. We seek integrity, connection, revelation and insight.

We started these conversations two years ago, wanting to teach, or rather guide, based on a consciousness of unity and intersection rather than control and separation. To understand ourselves better as part of a large web of connections, a mosaic of relationships which is unique to each of us and not logical in a linear sense of time. We ask ourselves how we relate to those who came before us and who guide us, beyond identification with particular form, and how we can come more into our own as artists, more connected with what we are painting, and more familiar with our materials and our own way of perceiving the world. 

Sundays – 12.30-14.00pm EST (New York)/ 18.30-20.00 CET (Berlin) – on Zoom

TESTIMONIALS

Eric and Ariane share their experience as painters and knowledge of art history with such generosity and sensitivity to the individual practices of the artists in our group. The supportive, open conversation they facilitate has helped me maintain a very alive connection with my own work, and with painting as a medium that offers such possibility. I look forward to our meeting every week.

S. L. M.

I first met Eric and Ariane in January 2023, when my work was exhibited in a group show in Chelsea. Since then, I’ve enjoyed getting together with our group every Saturday morning on zoom. Topics range from galleries visited that week, artists explored, pieces that group members are working on, and even an occasional poetry reading. We also look at various artists’ works — examining composition, line, color, etc. It’s a stimulating and friendly environment, where conversation flows easily with an interesting, diverse, and supportive group.

Bob Barnett

Painting is the queen of the arts, as was so succinctly expressed on and off for centuries. Not as much a recurrent adage as in the Modern Era, from 1450 circa until the mishmash of ornate philosophies muddied the waters around the industrial age. Some informed and cultivated minds never lost touch with those acts of the imagination that the art of painting alone can uncover. Some clearheaded imaginations can think and detect, regardless of style and inclination, the wonder of one, so many it happens, that humbly asks to REALLY see by matter.

I pay to remain in this group gladly, because I respect the humor, knowledge and love each has for this evolving art which is just in its infancy and will become evermore important to a vulnerable and fragile collective.

Barnaby Fitzgerald