Fridays, April 24 – June 29, 2026, 1:30 – 4:00pm
9-week Art Clinic with J. Jordan Bruns
This spring, we’ll explore Pierre Bonnard and Édouard Vuillard—two Nabi painters who turned ordinary interiors and gardens into luminous, patterned worlds. Through lectures and exercises, we’ll examine how they used color, pattern, and memory to create harmony and emotion in everyday scenes, and how their innovations continue to shape modern painting today. Minimum age 14. 9 sessions.
Schedule of Classes
Class 1) April 24 – Lecture: Introduction to the Nabis
We’ll begin with an overview of the Nabi movement, including its symbolism, decorative sensibility, flattening of space, and break from naturalism. We’ll discuss the group’s goals and consider how they set the stage for artists like Bonnard and Vuillard.
Exercise: Grab an impressionist painting, maybe a Degas or Renoir and approach the composition in a Nabi style. Or of course, you can use your own amazing references for this! Interiors and exteriors make great subjects, head outside and grab some spring photographs! Look for pattern, or maybe even collect patterns you can use in your painting.
Class 2) May 1 – Work Week
Continue your Nabi-inspired painting, paying close attention to how pattern, color, and shape unify the composition. Look for ways to simplify forms and ways to use pattern without the painting feeling cluttered.
Class 3) May 8 – Lecture: Pierre Bonnard and Color in Everyday Life
We’ll focus on Bonnard’s luminous color, unusual spatial structure, domestic subject matter, and his remarkable ability to turn everyday life into something radiant and psychologically rich.
Focus on Independent Work
Class 4) May 15 – Work Week
Focus on Independent Work
Class 5) May 22 – Lecture: Édouard Vuillard and the Intimate Interior
Our lecture this week is on Vuillard and how he compressed interiors. There is a lot of patterned environments in both their works but Vuillard really merged figures and setting into a unified decorative whole.
Exercise: Create a painting inspired by the Nabi interest in simplification, flattened space, and decoration. Choose an interior, still life, landscape, or figure-based image and reinterpret it with an emphasis on shape, pattern, and color harmony rather than realism.
Class 6) May 29 – Work Week
Focus on Independent Work
Class 7) June 5 – Work Week
— We’ll aim to finish up any projects this week as the following week we start a two week figure painting. —
Class 8) June 12 – Figure Painting (1 of 2)
We’ll begin a two-week figure painting that draws on ideas from the Nabis, as well as the specific lessons of Vuillard and Bonnard.
Exercise: Start a figure painting in which the model is integrated into the surrounding environment. Think about flattening, pattern, cropping, and how the background works with the composition.
Class 9) June 19 – Figure Painting (2 of 2)
Continuation and completion of the figure painting.
Supply List
All mediums are welcome! Let me know if you want any recommendations for a specific medium