What you will learn:
Learn to See Like a Painter
Train your eye to observe the portrait with greater clarity, understanding proportion, structure, relationships and the subtle shifts that give a face its character and presence.
Understand Light, Form & Colour
Learn how light reveals form, how values create volume, and how colour relationships work together to build a portrait that feels convincing, dimensional and alive.
Paint with Intention & Sensitivity
Develop a more deliberate approach to brushwork, edges, paint handling and decision-making, drawing on the principles of the Old Masters to move beyond simply copying what you see and create a portrait with depth and unity.
Meet the artist!
Hello, I'm Matthew.
For more than 25 years, I have lived and worked as an artist in Florence, surrounded by a tradition of painting and sculpture that has shaped the way I see the world.
My own education has been a long pursuit of the principles that guided the great painters of the past. Through classical atelier training, years spent studying masterworks firsthand, and a lifetime of painting from observation, I have sought to understand not simply how the Old Masters painted, but how they learned to see.
That distinction has become central to my work. Technique matters deeply, but painting a convincing portrait asks for more than technique. It requires us to slow down, to observe with greater sensitivity, and to understand light, form, colour, proportion and the presence of the person before us.
In my upcoming portrait painting course, I want to bring something of that Florentine atelier experience beyond the walls of my studio. I will guide you through the principles and ways of thinking that have shaped my own practice, helping you develop not only greater command of paint, but a more discerning eye.
My hope is that, by the end, you will not simply paint portraits differently.
You will see them differently.
JOIN NOW