About Workshops and Clinics

Herring conducts both: workshops are for everyone, clinics are by invitation only for those that are training to master their artform. He travels in and out of the United States, and invites anyone who wants to do what he does to come along.

Question: What is it that he does?

Answer: He is a painter. His style comes from seduction. It was Bonnard who said it well, the lawyer who got out of law because he wanted “an artistic life”, "color seduced me, so I use it seductively." A romantic, Herring does it for love, and what he loves is open and not local color. Open color has two characteristics: first, it is chosen arbitrarily for the sake of emotion, and secondly, moves in and out of the boundaries of line for the sake of rhythm. In other words, to quote Turner, "Color was never meant to describe, but to arouse and excite."

His workshop environment is full of explosive palettes, not limited ones. He paints in all areas of subject matter, and combines mediums at will for beauty's sake. He teaches his students to draw, and not sketch, which, according to him, is a monumental waste of time. He also rejects the need for such time-honored traditions as a focal point, a center-of-interest, and the pathetic inclination to evoke a mood. He turns his back on the obligation to tell or sell something, believing that a love for beauty and composition is enough. He also steers artists away from the dead end street called impressionism, which Renoir also rejected. And if a student wants to do non-objective work, hunting for "found objects", pouring ink everywhere in an esoteric jungle, he just asks them to go elsewhere.

No bones are made by the Artist about greatness. He believes everyone should train for it. The alternative is to be small, and "life is too short to be little."

Herring, finally, believes in sticking with artists on the ten-year journey to mastery. Each clinic and every workshop concludes with personal prescriptions for every aspirant. The idea is to see every artist grow up into that intoxicant called his own style.

And what is that?

Oscar Wilde:

"It is style that makes you believe a thing - nothing but style. Most of our modern painters are doomed to absolute oblivion. They never paint what they see. They paint what the public sees, and the public never sees anything."