Painting With Light
Studio Masterclass ‘Painting with Light’ with Dr David Ellison.
Students on the BA (Hons) Creative Industries and Visual Culture degree recently took part in a ‘Painting with Light’ masterclass with TU Dublin lecturer Dr David Ellison as part of the first year modules, ‘Whose History’ and ‘Vision and Spectacle’.
In this masterclass, students are asked to engage with key historical artworks to inform their questioning of how portraiture is used as historical evidence. They are required to engage with academic texts like Peter Burke’s Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence as models for learning how to write about images in visual culture.
Particularly foregrounded is the encouragement to be active in visual research. Students are introduced to John Ruskin’s teachings where, in one famous instance, Oscar Wilde (during his time as an undergraduate at Oxford University) in cooperation with other undergraduates, created a functional road referred to as ‘Ruskin’s Road’.
The unlikely comparison between the historical and contemporary teachings of John Ruskin and David Ellison is an attempt to make studying Creative Industries and Visual Culture at TU Dublin a rewarding pursuit that is both academic and practical.
‘Painting with Light’ is a masterclass which combines using photographic technique and the history of art in a practical research exercise, involving close research engagement with painting and experimentation with photography’s use of light.
Historical works of art are used alongside contemporary photography to illustrate how photographic art is produced e.g. Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s The Taking of Christ (1602), seen at Dublin’s National Museum of Ireland, illustrates how light and dark create a radically dramatic image.
Dr David Ellison draws on years of professional photographic practice to bring students in contact with the photographic studios at the university, allowing students to help create a lasting image of their scholarship TU Dublin.
Referenced Texts
Burke, Peter. Eyewitnessing: The Uses of Images as Historical Evidence. University of Chicago Press. 2019.
Richards, Bernard. Oscar Wilde and Ruskin’s Road. The Wildean, No.40 (2012) pp 74–88. http://www.jstor.org/stable/45270216
Referenced Artworks
Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610), The Taking of Christ, 1602.
Brian Griffin (1948-2024), Railway Compliance Group, 2008.
Ori Gersht (1967 - ) Time After Time: Blow Up, 2009.