New Workshops at Center for the Arts

By Noelle H. Lowery
noelle@coastalbreezenews.com

Two of Marco Island’s favorite senior artists — William Ward Moseley and Charles Gruppe — are back by popular demand this month at the Center for the Arts. Both are conducting workshops in their favorite mediums.

Moseley will lead two sessions of “Fun with Pastels.” The first will be held Tuesday, March 11, 9:30 AM-4:00 PM, and the second will be a two-day workshop, Tuesday and Wednesday, March 25-26, 9:30 AM-12:30 PM, each day. The workshop fee is $100.

Gruppe’s three-day workshop, “Painting in Oil and Acrylics,” will be held Wednesday-Friday, March 12-14, 10 AM-4 PM, each day. The workshop fee for members of the Center is $260, and for nonmembers, it is $325.

An architect by trade and Virginian by birth, Moseley began painting as a child. At age seven, he entered an art contest sponsored by the

“Richmond Times-Dispatch,” and won first place for his painting of a train engine. He is a graduate of the Virginia Tech School of Architecture and the founder of Moseley Architects, an award-winning Richmond-based architectural, engineering, planning and interior design still operating today.

Upon retirement in 1990, Moseley began to study art in earnest, and to date, he has completed more than 1,200 paintings and receive more than 100 awards for his work. In 2011, he published “An Affair with Art.” Part deeply personal memoir and part artistic odyssey, the book covers his early battles with alcohol, anxiety and depression and his triumphantly hopeful message of how art helped him gain control, perspective and purpose. Moseley most recently participated in the Marco Island Chamber of Commerce’s “Wet Paint Live” event.

To say Gruppe has art in his blood would be an understatement.

While his father, Paulo, was a gifted cellist, his grandfather was the celebrated marine life artist Charles Paul Gruppe. His uncle, Karl, was a sculptor, and another uncle, Emile, was a painter. Gruppe studied at both Yale and Columbia universities, and studied art in Italy on a Fulbright Fellowship Grant. He is represented in more than 5,000 public and private collections, and he has completed commissions for Yale Divinity School, American President Lines, Fort Lauderdale’s National Bank of Florida, First National Bank of New Haven and actor Charleton Heston.

In his workshop, Gruppe will share his very personal technique of using a palette knife and brush in a rapid wet-on-wet approach. Each day, students will create their own works of art in a “controlled” impressionistic style.

Those interested in either workshop should contact the Marco Island Center for the Arts at 239-394-4221 or visit www.marcoislandart.org.