SPARK Workshop – Portrait Painting with Mars Drum

“We grow up wishing our faces were perfect. Perfectly what? Let’s paint new faces, faces never seen before, faces with fabulous flaws, faults, and failings. Let’s paint wild, wacky, wonderful faces. Let’s paint perfectly imperfect faces. No face fails, all portraits pass!” – Mars Drum 

This response embraces the idea of celebrating uniqueness and individuality rather than conforming to conventional standards of beauty. It encourages creativity and self-expression by suggesting the creation of new and unconventional faces with all their quirks and imperfections. The phrase “perfectly imperfect faces” highlights the beauty in diversity and challenges the notion of a singular standard of perfection. It promotes self-acceptance and the appreciation of one’s unique features and characteristics. Overall, the message encourages embracing authenticity and rejecting unrealistic beauty ideals.

We invite your students to join acclaimed visual artist Mars Drum, in a journey of colour, abstraction and expression in this portrait painting workshop.

Mars has exhibited locally, nationally and internationally and her practice teases out the sometimes uncomfortable and awkward aspects of intrenched perceptions of beauty, cultural identity and use of fashion icons to exploit body imagery.

In this workshop, students will use techniques and tools to explore portraiture painting in a highly expressive and evocative way.

Suitable for students from Yrs. 5 – 11

2 sessions daily -10am or 12pm (or tailored for your school) 

Bookings through the gallery : 5382 9575

Image: Student work from VCE Creative Arts Day March 1, 2024