Secrets of the Old Masters laid bare
The Sydney Morning Herald 03/09/2010
Steve Meacham
Its contemporary painting done the old school way, writes Steve Meacham. The large, colourful Kandinsky- influences abstracts that dominate Charlie Sheard’s studio in a former warehouse in Redfern give little hint of the 50-year-old painters obsession with Titian, Velasquez and Rembrandt. But for the past 15 years Sheard has run one of Sydney’s most successful private art school, dedicated to passing on the secrets of the Old Masters to a new generation of Australian artists. Every Tuesday, 16 first-year students- who have each paid $7000 for the 20-week course-cram into Sheard’s studio for a morning of lectures, followed by an afternoon of practical tuition about how to grind pigments like Rubens used to, or how to apply glaze like Caravaggio.
Every Wednesday, 16 third-year students do the same thing, knowing Sheard won’t let the temperature rise above a Spartan 16 degrees: hence the title of their graduation exhibition, 16 Degrees, at the Charles Hewitt Gallery in Darlinghurst. Most of those attending Sheard’s classes have been to art school; many have their own dealers and exhibition galleries. Former students include Jennifer Keeler-Milne, Celia Gullett, Alexander McKenzie, Timothy Smith and Andrew Kelly. So what makes them fork out $21,000 for the three-year course? What do they get out of it? “Well, no piece of paper, for a start,” laughs Sheards. There’s no diploma or certificate involved – just the satisfaction of learning what Sheard calls “the techniques of the Old Masters. My course is a bridge between those traditional techniques and contemporary painting.” The Charlie Sheard Studio School grew out of Sheard’s sense of inadequacy almost a decade after graduating from what is now the College of Fine Arts at the University of NSW. “I had an artistic crises when I was around 30,” Sheard admits. “I thought, ‘God, I don’t really know anything about the Old Masters.’ So I started doing a lot of research.
A lot of what I teach is based on conservation reports done of Old Masters paintings. It is factual, scientific information about how Old Master paintings were made.” His growing expertise became known in art circles. “I was working in a shop at the time and all these famous artists were coming in to ask questions. I though, ‘Why don’t I sell this knowledge?’” In the three-year syllabus, Sheard runs through the practical techniques of painters from the Renaissance to the Baroque, from the Rococo to Matisee and Monet. “This school is the closest thing there is to the old studio system,” Sheard says. “In the 16th century if you wanted to learn how to paint you became an apprentice in a studio where you ground the paint. From that, you learnt what paint is, how to mix colours, what the pigments are, as opposed to going to a shop and buying it in a tube… I teach [my students] how to get effects like Rubens and Rembrandt, Titian and Velasquez. The rest is 99 per cent practice.”
That doesn’t mean the school seeks to churn out lots of copycat Leonardos or Van Dycks. Sheard points to a medical skeleton standing by his latest work; which will be exhibited at the Tim Olsen Gallery next year. “The basic philosophy of the school is to take the traditional training, which gives you the backbone. It’s up to each artist to fill in the flesh.” 16 Degrees, featuring 16 artists from the Charlie Sheard Studio School, is at the Charles Hewitt Gallery until September 20.