Ken Salaz Workshop 2022

Plein Air Landscape Workshop in the Heart of the Catskills

“No serious pursuit of the craft and artistry of painting can leave a person indifferent to the mysteries and wonderment of the world around us and within us.” — Ken Salaz

The greatest landscape painters in American history spent years painting in the Catskill Mountains.

Join ARC’s Living Master, Ken Salaz in the heart of the Catskills to learn how to paint like Church, Bierstadt and others where you will explore the fertile grounds of one of the great landscape painters mecca’s — Kaaterskill Falls.  With gorgeous vistas, quiet streams and phenomenal light, this location will ignite your imagination.  It’s a Plein Air workshop that will inspire and instruct any artist at any level.

Workshop Overview

In our 3-day workshop Katterskill Falls Revisited, Ken Salaz will cover the stages of Grisaille and alla prima Plein Air.  This workshop will focus on deepening your fundamental skills as an artist and painter and is based off the contents of his book Landscapes in Oil: A Contemporary Guide to Realistic Painting in the Classical Tradition” and DVD Majestic Landscapes, both of which will be used as a reference. Emphasis will be on drawing, value and color as well as composition and light quality. 

DAY 1: LIVESTREAM STUDIO, Friday, TBA 10AM – 2PM
Mr. Salaz will begin the workshop with a four-hour Livestream Video introduction to his methods and overview of techniques with all workshop attendees. ZOOM links will be emailed prior to the session

DAY 2: PAINTING AT KAATERSKILL FALLS, Saturday, TBA, 9AM to 3PM
We’ll meet on location and Mr. Salaz will do a short demo of the landscape. Following that,  he’ll provide individual critiques helping students achieve an in-depth understanding of drawing, value, color, light quality and paint application. 

DAY 3: PAINTING AT KAATERSKILL FALLS, Sunday, TBA, 9AM to 3PM
Participants will take their paintings to completion under the watchful eye and tutelage of Mr. Salaz. If you have been searching for a landscape workshop that will enable you take your landscape paintings to a masterful level, then please join us! 

Location: Kaaterskill Falls

Kaaterskill Falls, (Hunter NY) Laurel House Road, Trail location (map)
Meetup location: Laurel House Road parking lot 8:30AM; Arrive early to secure a parking spot and a short walk to painting location. Workshop begins 9AM. Please wear appropriate shoes/apparel to spend the day outdoors comfortably.

NOTE: Cell phones for group texts are required communications regarding any alerts/changes to our painting locations, weather conditions and for safety considerations.

Registration and Fees

Workshop Fee: $450.00 includes: Studio LIVESTREAM with Ken Salaz on ZOOM; Plus two days of instructed painting on location at Kaaterskill Falls.

Add-On: Patreon Critique, 30-minutes with Ken to discuss further development of your workshop paintings

Getting There

FROM NYC TO PALENVILLE by train, bus or car
The trip is approximately 2 hours from NYC

MAP TO PALENVILLE, NY (Katterskills Falls)
There are no restrooms or food kiosks located in the park (see map). This is a carry in/carry out location and a level of comfort for moderate hiking is required.

Paint Local. Stay Local.

The Sedgwick House Bed & Breakfast
7760 Main St, Hunter, NY 12442 (518) 263-3871

The Fairlawn Inn
7872 Main St, Hunter, NY 12442 (518) 263-5025

Additional places to stay near Palenville NY with Booking.com
Email us for any travel-related questions: info@zanegreypleinair.com

About Kaaterskill Falls and Kaaterskill Clove

Thomas Cole painted the clove from the top of Haines Falls, Asher Durand from nearby Santa Cruz Falls, and Sanford Gifford from near Poet's Ledge. Their paintings helped Americans form a sense of national identity. Here was a quality of nature wild, sublime, and distinctly different from anything known in Europe. The clove was of such importance to these painters that Durand chose it as the setting for the painting Kindred Spirits, his tribute to Thomas Cole with poet William Cullen Bryant. The area today is largely as it was in the 19th century due to its inclusion in the Catskill Forest Preserve.

Kaaterskill Falls
Introduction by Kevin J. Avery, Senior Research Scholar, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

"Why, there's a fall in the hills, where the water of two little ponds that lie near each other breaks out of their bounds, and runs over the rocks into the valley. . . . The first pitch is nigh two hundred feet, and the water looks like flakes of driven snow, afore it touches the bottom; and there the stream gathers again for a new start, and maybe flutters over fifty feet of flat-rock, before it falls another hundred."  —

So was the lofty (about 260 total feet in height), two-tiered Kaaterskill Falls described by Hawkeye, the colonial scout of James Fenimore Cooper's 1823 novel, The Pioneers.  Kaaterskill Falls was the scenic prize of any walk in the vicinity of the great hotels that crowned the mountaintop near Palenville and Haines Falls from 1824 to 1963.  Such a tourist magnet did the falls become that the proprietor of a mill near its crest, and after him a hotelier, charged a fee to open a dam gate constructed to regulate the flow in timed "performances."  (To watch, hotel guests and day visitors descended a wooden staircase—removed long ago—beside the cascade.)  Numerous artists represented the falls throughout the period, especially the first of them, Thomas Cole, whose earliest paintings (1825-26), showing the cataract from in front, behind (inside the cavern), and the top eventually helped earn him the nickname, "Father of the Hudson River School."

Kaaterskill Clove
Introduction by Kevin J. Avery, Senior Research Scholar, The Metropolitan Museum of Art

The clove, a distinctive feature or "cleft" in the Catskills, was one of the places most painted by the Hudson River School artists. The rugged terrain of the clove was created by glacial action and the erosive forces of the streams that cut into its depths and cascade down its sides. Palenville, at the foot of the clove, became America's first art colony.

Thomas Cole painted the clove from the top of Haines Falls, Asher Durand from nearby Santa Cruz Falls, and Sanford Gifford from near Poet's Ledge. Their paintings helped Americans form a sense of national identity. Here was a quality of nature wild, sublime, and distinctly different from anything known in Europe. The clove was of such importance to these painters that Durand chose it as the setting for the painting Kindred Spirits, his tribute to Thomas Cole with poet William Cullen Bryant. The area today is largely as it was in the 19th century due to its inclusion in the Catskill Forest Preserve.

"The peculiar fidelity and sentiment of nature with which Durand always depicts trees, is eloquently manifest. The aerial perspective, the gradations of light, the tints of foliage, the slope of the mountains – in a word, the whole scenic expression is harmonious, grand, tender and true." Henry T. Tuckerman, Book of the Artists; American Artist Life, 1867.

ORDER: Landscapes in Oil: A Contemporary Guide to Realistic Painting in the Classical Tradition by Ken Salaz, is the first-ever comprehensive guide to classical landscape painting reinterpreted for the twenty-first century.

About the Artist

Ken Salaz was born in 1970 in southern California and spent his youth living in numerous locations with his family including Mexico, the Southwest United States and the Appalachian mountains of West Virginia. His ancestral heritage is a rich blend of Native American and Irish. As a child and teenager, he constantly drew the changing landscapes and people on travels with his family.

After graduating from Cooper Union, Ken spent several years traveling the world — through Asia, Central and South America and Europe painting landscapes and making copies of Masterworks at numerous Museums. He continued his education with Leonid Gervitz of the Repin Academy and Nelson Shanks. He trained for three years at The Water Street Studio of Jacob Collins and spent two summers with the Hudson River Fellowship in the Catskill Mountains. He is currently a Senior Fellow and instructor at the Fellowship.

Ken’s mastery of technique shows a diverse flexibility of expression, allowing him to capture a wide range of light effects. In addition, his solid background in traditional techniques used by the “Old Masters” also allows him the groundwork to create works that have a unique poetic expression. His work is held in numerous prominent collections across the United States.

His work and processes have been featured numerous times in notable Magazines and Publications such as “Fine Art Connoisseur” and “Plein Air Magazine”. Mr. Salaz is seen by many as a new and unique voice emerging from the tonalist traditions of George Inness and breaking new ground with his own modern voice of Poetic Realism.

In addition to being a masterful Artist, Mr. Salaz is a highly accomplished Magician, Mentalist and Pick-Pocket, entertaining such celebrities as Bruce Springsteen and Jimmy Fallon. He currently lives with his wife and sons in the beautiful Hudson River Valley.

To see more of Ken Salaz work, go to: https://kensalaz.com/