I think one of the hardest things about making art is knowing how to make a piece work. You can have beautiful papers. You can have colors you love. You can have interesting marks and textures and all kinds of wonderful individual ingredients. But somehow, when you put them together, the finished artwork doesn’t always sing.
Very often, the missing piece is composition.
Composition is one of those art words that can sound much more intimidating than it actually is. At its most basic, composition is simply how you arrange all of the parts of your artwork. Where does your eye go first? What feels important? Is there enough contrast? Does the piece feel balanced? Is there somewhere for your eye to rest? And perhaps most importantly: why does one arrangement feel satisfying while another one doesn’t?
These are exactly the questions we’re going to dig into during my Mixed Media Collage Composition Intensive, October 10-12, 2026, here in my studio in Watertown, Massachusetts.
What Will You Learn?
Learning composition isn’t about memorizing a formula for making “good” art. It’s about developing a toolbox. When you’re staring at a blank piece of paper and wondering where to begin, you have somewhere to start. When a piece feels wrong and you can’t quite figure out why, you have some ideas about what to change. And when you find something that works, you understand it well enough to deliberately push it somewhere new.
This is a three-day, hands-on workshop devoted to understanding composition by actually making lots and lots of art. We’re going to work with several reliable compositional structures and explore why they work, how to adapt them, and how you can use the same basic composition again and again without making the same piece of art over and over.
Over the course of the three days, you’ll create approximately 6-12 small finished mixed media collage artworks, depending on your working speed. We’ll talk about contrast, color, value, layering, dominance, thumbnail sketches, adhesives, papers, and all of the practical nuts-and-bolts that go into building a successful collage. We’ll also look at how the same compositional ideas can work for both abstract and representational art. Having a few simple compositions that you can rely on, allows you to spend more of your creative energy on the fun parts like color and pattern and less on the mechanics behind the artwork.
But I also want to say that, for me, an in-person workshop is about much more than the information being taught.
The Pleasure of an In-Person Workshop
There is something wonderful about giving yourself several uninterrupted days to make art. You don’t have to squeeze it in before dinner or clean everything up because somebody needs the table. You get to settle into the work, try something, make another one, change your mind, ask a question, look at what someone else is doing, have a conversation, and then head right back into your own artwork. That sustained period of making can be incredibly valuable.
And because the workshop takes place in my home studio, it’s a very small and intimate group (just 8 students). As always, classes at my home studio include all art supplies plus breakfast, lunch, and snacks (home cooked by my dear sweet husband).
You can even stay after class and continue working in the studio until 6pm if you haven’t quite gotten enough art-making into your day!
In other words, you really can just show up and make art. People come to workshops alone, with a sister, with their mother or child, with a friend, or with a spouse who goes exploring in Boston while class is in session. All are welcome!
The class runs Saturday, October 10 through Monday, October 12, 2026. It’s a three-day holiday weekend here in Massachusetts, which makes it a particularly nice excuse for an art getaway. Watertown is only about 20-30 minutes from downtown Boston, so you could easily tack on a museum visit (or several!) before or after the workshop.
In Closing
If composition is something you’ve struggled with — or if you simply want three days to immerse yourself in collage, experimentation, conversation, and making — I would love to have you here in the studio.
The earlier October session of this workshop sold out, which is why I added this second set of dates. Space is extremely limited, so if you’ve been thinking about taking an in-person class with me, this might be the one.
Come spend three days making art, thinking deeply about composition, and building a set of tools you can take back into your own studio practice.
Read all the details and register for the Mixed Media Collage Composition Intensive.
The studio is ready for you to come and play!
