Supported through funding from private donors, the Critically Acclaimed Artists Program (CAP) is designed to attract high caliber national and international practicing artists to Sunbury Shores as instructors.

Sunbury Shores is dedicated to exposing practicing artists and arts enthusiasts to the teachings and works of acclaimed Canadian and international contemporary artists in order to support the development of the arts in New Brunswick and plant new creative seeds in our communities.

In 2018 we hosted Lisa Lebofsky, Michael Flaherty, and Sarah Alford and in 2019 we hosted Alyssa Monks and Maggie Rose. 2020 sees the return of Maggie Rose, along with Aleah Chapin.   Scroll down for more information.  For registration please call us, email, or follow the links on the Adult Courses page.

About Aleah Chapin

Born in 1986, Aleah Chapin grew up on an island north of Seattle, Washington. She received her BFA from Cornish College of the Arts in 2009 and her MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2012.
Aleah has attended residencies at the Leipzig International Art Programme in Germany and the MacDowell Colony in New Hampshire. Recent exhibitions have included the 2016 Invitational Exhibition of Visual Arts, American Academy of Arts and Letters, New York; The Ingram Collection: Bodies, Woking, UK and a solo show, Within Wilds at Flowers Gallery, London. She has been a recipient of the Willard L. Metcalf Award in Art from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Posey Foundation Scholarship, the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant, a Postgraduate Fellowship from the New York Academy of Art, and won the BP Portrait Award at the National Portrait Gallery in London in 2012. Aleah now lives and paints in the Pacific Northwest, USA, where the people and place of her home are the
foundation of her work.

Aleah Chapin is Teaching:

Figure Painting: Images that Live
July 12 – 16, 2021

Aleah Chapin returns to SSANC for a second season.  Aleah will be joining the class from Seattle – students have the option to attend at Sunbury Shores, or via a restricted Zoom link.  This class will be a combination of live and pre-recorded demonstrations. Based on the 2020 class, this was extremely successful with plenty of direct, one-on-one tuition included.

Why is it that we paint and don’t just take photographs when our goal is realism? Because paint breathes life into an image. Each brush mark is made with intention, and the accidents that inherently happen are the cornerstone to a painting feeling alive.

In this 5-day intensive workshop, we will explore several different ways to bring our paintings to life, using primarily photography as our reference, with a live nude model if possible. We will begin each day by looking at the bigger picture, drawing from life quickly with charcoal and finding the movement that naturally runs through the body, as well as working on a single closeup painting from life. The afternoon will be spent working exclusively with paint, zooming in and scaling up from traditional figurative painting, abstracting the body so we can focus on the language of skin. During the afternoons, students will work on 3 abstracted body paintings from a selection of photographs that will be provided.

We will be doing a lot of work in this class, so prepare to let go of perfection. We will focus on the dance between intention and impulse, control and abandon, so we learn to create paintings that feel alive, in every sense of that word.

About Maggie Rose

Maggie Rose is a Canadian artist currently living in Toronto. After graduating cum laude from the New
York Academy in 2001, Maggie continued her training at the Michael Aviano Atelier and studied drawing with Michael Grimaldi. She now paints full time and is passionate about teaching and passing on the training she feels blessed to have received.

Maggie has taught for several years at SSANC, always to rave reviews, much gratitude and wonderful results. Maggie’s work is primarily figurative. She prefers to work from life and often sculpts small figurines when working on subjects that require photo reference. Her primary focus is the continued exploration of the human body, of the color and translucency of flesh, and in objects which we identify with the body such as clothing and dressmaker forms.

Alyssa Monks was Teaching:

Transcending the Photo Reference in Painting
June 20,21,22  2019

About Alyssa Monks

“I strive to create a moment in a painting where the viewer can see or feel themselves, identify with the subject, even be the subject, connect with it as though it is about them, personally.”

Alyssa Monks is an American painter blurring the line between abstraction and realism by layering different spaces and moments in her paintings. She flipped background and foreground using semi-transparent filters of glass, vinyl, steam, and water over shallow spaces in her 10-year long water series. Today, she is imposing a transparent landscape of infinite space over evocative subjects.

The tension in her paintings is sustained by the composition and also by the surface quality itself. Each brushstroke is thickly applied oil paint, like a fossil recording every gesture and decision, expressing the energetic and empathic experience of the handmade object.

Alyssa’s work is represented by Forum Gallery in New York City. She lives and paints in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Her latest solo exhibition “Resolution” was in March and April of 2016 at Forum Gallery. Monks’s paintings have been the subject of numerous solo and group exhibitions including “Intimacy” at the Kunst Museum in Ahlen, Germany and “Reconfiguring the Body in American Art, 1820–2009” at the National Academy Museum of Fine Arts, New York. Her work is represented in public and private collections. Alyssa has been awarded the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation Grant for Painting three times and serves as a member of the New York Academy of Art’s Board of Trustees.

David Kaarsemaker

David Kaarsemaker is Toronto based painter. He holds a BFA from Concordia University and an MFA from the University of Ottawa and has taught at institutions across the country. In 2017, he was a finalist for the RBC Canadian Painting Competition and his work can be found in the collections of the City of Ottatwa and the City of St. John’s, the Department of Foreign Affairs, the Newfoundland Provincial Art Bank and the Rooms Provincial Art Gallery.

In his paintings, he searched for tension between the material presence of depicted objects and the dissolving glow of light and colour that surrounds them, creating a hinge between the perceptive indices of two  and three dimentionality. His work examines the political and environmental realities that lie benath the surface of his experiences in wilderness areas, seeking to honour its beauty, while also facing the construction of wilderness as an idea, and his own participation in this structure.

Lisa Lebofsky was Teaching:

Moving Landscapes: Indoors and Outdoors; Technique and Philosophy

August  2018

About Lisa Lebofsky

Lisa Lebofsky paints the susceptibility of nature, correlating its restlessness with our own human vulnerabilities. Her direct participation with the landscape is vital to imbue a painting with the energy of a specific place, so that viewers can connect viscerally: to move, excite and engage them.

Lebofsky finds inspiration by traveling extensively, often to remote parts of the world, in order to immerse herself in different environment and cultures. She seeks out areas around the globe that are particularly susceptible to the impacts of climate change, and meets with local residents to discuss how their community is impacted. To a great extent, these personal interactions inform what areas and what subject matter is ultimately painted. Recent regions visited include Antarctica, Newfoundland and Labrador, Greenland and The Maldives. She currently lives and works in New York City.

Education:
2000 BFA Metals, State University of New York (SUNY) New Paltz, NY
2006 MFA Painting, New York Academy of Art, New York, NY

Michael Flaherty was Teaching:

Mud, Sun and Forest
June 2018

More About Michael’s Solar-Powered Kiln

About Michael Flaherty

Michael Flaherty was born in Newfoundland and subsequently spent much of his childhood getting lost in the woods. As an adult he has lived alone for three months on a deserted island, crisscrossed Canada and the United States by bicycle, and inhabited abandoned communities in his home province, all as part of his artistic practice.

Flaherty studied ceramics at NSCAD University (BFA) and University of Regina (MFA) and has taught at numerous institutions across the country. His work was recognized nationally when he was a semi-finalist for the Sobey Art Award (2011) and a finalist for the RBC People’s Choice Award (2013). He won the Large Year Award from Visual Artists Newfoundland and Labrador in 2013.

Flaherty resides in Port Union, Newfoundland, where he has established Wild Cove Pottery. His studio activities are varied, including pottery, sculpture, installation, and performance.

Sarah Alford was Teaching:

Naive Botany: A Natural History Guide to Installation Practice
August  2018

About Sarah Alford

“I am in the practice of re-imagining what it means to know the world.”

Sarah Alford is a practicing artist and perpetual student with undergraduate degrees in Jewellery/Metalsmithing and Art History from the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design University (NSCAD). She was awarded a Fulbright to attend the School of the Art Institute of Chicago where she earned an MA in Visual and Critical Studies, and an MFA in studio through the department of Fibre and Material Studies. She taught art history and studio classes at NSCAD before becoming a PhD candidate in Art History and Art Conservation at Queen’s University, Kingston. She has exhibited across Canada, Scotland, and the United States, including the Museum of Arts and Design in New York and the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago.

“I contextualize my work within art practices that look to community, process, and intervention as meaningful sites for uncovering lost emancipatory moments and for growing political awareness in the present. My work, however, is often undidactic, ephemeral and asks viewers to suspend their beliefs and to place themselves somewhere between citing and siting.”