2025 AUTUMN ONLINE | LIGHT on the PORTRAIT (6-week program)

“Having laid down your shadows while keeping this in mind, you should next put down your light colors starting with the focal point. This sets the tone and gradations of subordinate areas. Lay down the colors purely and exactly where they need to go. Then work on finding the correct and true half-tones that make up the interval between the lights and shadows. The whole secret of so-called “beautiful color” resides in this understanding.

Yes! This secret is one that cannot be taught. It depends solely on an acute sensitivity, a sensitivity that I would even call audacious. It enables us to see nature as the great colorists have seen it, but at the same time makes us aspire to seeing it even better than they did. Because, from where did their reputation as great colorists come? It came from the fact that they dared depict nature differently from those who had come before them. They were all the happier for delivering it with more truth. But how did they find this greater truth? Was it through copying others?

No, it was through copying nature with well-trained eyes, perceiving it skillfully with the help of the most esteemed colorists. They did so with their own eyes and in a spirit of emulation, not servitude.”

– Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Discours sur la Pratique de la Peinture… (2 Dec 1752)

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INSTRUCTOR:	LIGHT ON THE PORTRAIT will be taught by founding faculty N. Michelle TULLY
PLATFORMS and FORMAT:	Video content will be hosted on Vimeo, and available only through the Studio Escalier website. Demonstration slideshows and photos essays will be provided too. Individual weekly critique and weekly group meetings will take place on Zoom. A private Facebook Group will be created for those students who wish to post their progress and share their work during the course. The Facebook group will be monitored by the instructor and participation is optional.
CLASS DATES:	Friday, 7 NOVEMBER – Friday, 19 DECEMBER 2025 (6 weeks)
CLASS SCHEDULE:	New course content (4-6 hours per week of video lectures and demonstrations, plus slideshows and assignments) will be be published online weekly by 13:00 on FRIDAY afternoon (Paris time – GMT+1), making it available to all students worldwide. Weekly online group meeting and instructor presentation held live once each SUNDAY, morning and evening (18:00, Paris time – GMT+1). (A pre-recorded version will also be available online for those who cannot attend the live meeting.) First online group meeting time(s) and date: TBA 18:00, Paris time (GMT+1). Individual critiques will be arranged as required once each week on THURSDAY or FRIDAY (9:00-18:00, Paris time – GMT+1).
CLASS SIZE:	20 students, per 6-week section
WHO is ELIGIBLE?	Entry by application only. Anyone may apply, worldwide.
TUITION PRICE:	1500 EUROS for 6 weeks
APPLICATION DEADLINE:	6 JUNE 2025
PAYMENT DUE:	14 JUNE 2025
HOW to APPLY:	Admissions for AUTUMN ONLINE | LIGHT on the PORTRAIT will open soon. Please review the ADMISSIONS page for general information about the application process.

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COURSE DESCRIPTION

COMING SOON

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ABOUT THE INSTRUCTOR

N. Michelle TULLY (b. 1972) is full-time faculty and co-founder of Studio Escalier.

Ms. Tully has shown her work in galleries in the United States and Europe for over 30 years, including Iliad Antik (NYC), the Sherry French Gallery (NYC), Klaudia Marr Fine Art (Santa Fe, NM) and the John Pence Gallery (San Francisco). Her work has entered several distinguished private collections in the US and Europe, including the collections of Margot Gordon, Charles B. Wessler, and HRH the Prince of Wales.

In 2015, Ms Tully’s portrait “NG” was selected to be included in the annual Royal Society of Portrait painters exhibition at the Mall Galleries in London.

In 2012, Ms. Tully’s work was selected by ACOPAL (the America China Oil Painters Art League) to be included in the first major exhibition of contemporary American realist painting in China. The ACOPAL exhibition debuted at the National Arts Club in New York City in 2012, and traveled to several major museums in China in 2013.

She has been the recipient of grants, fellowships and exhibition prizes from the Elizabeth Greenshields Foundation, the New York Academy of Art, the Prince of Wales Fellowship, the National Academy of Design, the Circulo de Bellas Artes in Madrid, Spain, the Leslie T. and Frances U. Posey Foundation and the Stacey Foundation.

She received her MFA degree in Painting from the Graduate School of Figurative Art – New York Academy of Art (2004). She went to art school in New York City at the Art Students League and National Academy of Design, and in France at the Ecole Albert Defois under Ted Seth Jacobs (1996-2001). She holds a BA degree magna cum laude in Art History from New York University.

Ms Tully was one of eight original members of the Jacob Collins Studio (1994-97) and was one of eleven founding members of the Water Street Atelier (1997-98), both in Brooklyn, NY.