Painting Classes in Southbury, Connecticut

Lorraine Skelskey-Chapin teaches oil and acrylic painting out of her studio in Southbury, Connecticut, and at a second location a few minutes away. The groups are small. Everyone works on their own painting rather than copying one setup, so the person at the next easel might be on a photograph of their dog while you are on a marsh you cannot get right.

Who actually comes: people who painted in college and then stopped for thirty years, people who have never held a brush, and painters already showing work who want another set of eyes on it. They sit in the same room. Lorraine works with each of them on what that person is actually trying to do.

She demonstrates and she critiques, and neither is a performance. A demonstration is often five minutes at somebody's easel, because loading a brush is faster to watch than to describe.

The schedule

Five ways to work with her. Three run to a standing weekly slot. The other two are arranged around you and around the weather, so they carry no day and no time until you have spoken to her.

What a session is actually like

You arrive a few minutes early, because setting up takes a few minutes and nobody paints well in a rush. You claim an easel, put your board or canvas up, squeeze out paint, and get your brushes where your hand expects to find them. If you have brought a photograph to work from, it goes up where you can see it without leaning over.

Then you paint, and Lorraine comes around. This is the part that surprises people: she does not stand at the front and talk at the room. She looks at what is on your board, asks what you are after, and answers that question. Sometimes it is drawing, and the fix is moving a line before more paint goes down. Sometimes it is value, and she holds a brush up to show you that two areas you believe are different are the same. Sometimes it is mud, and the fix is a clean brush and less paint.

At some point she demonstrates. It might be at her own panel with the room gathered round, or at your easel in three strokes, depending on whether the problem is yours or everybody's. Watch her hands rather than the painting: how much paint she picks up, where she holds the brush, and how early she stops.

Near the end things slow down and paintings get talked about out loud. That is the critique, and it is not a firing squad. The useful kind names what is working before it names what is not, and it ends with a next move rather than a verdict. You can sit one out on any given week and nobody makes anything of it.

Then everybody cleans brushes, which always takes longer than anyone plans for.

If you have never painted before

This is the real question people are asking when they call. A first-timer is normal here rather than tolerated.

Three things worth knowing. First, the class is not sequenced. There is no week one you have already missed and no skill gate to clear before you are allowed to paint something you care about. You start on a small canvas with a simple subject, on day one.

Second, a mixed-level room helps the beginner most. Sitting next to somebody four years ahead of you is the quickest way to see what four years looks like, and most of the advanced painters were the beginner in that same room not long ago.

Third, you will make a bad painting, probably several. Everyone there has a stack of them at home. The point of the first few months is not a painting worth framing, it is getting your hand and your eye speaking to each other, and that happens through the bad ones.

If starting in a group is the part you do not want, she also teachesone to one.

What to bring

Do not go to an art store and fill a basket before you have spoken to her. That is the most expensive mistake beginners make, and it usually produces a lot of equipment and none of the four brushes you actually need.

Call first. She will tell you what to buy for the medium you are starting in, what to buy cheaply, and what to leave on the shelf. When you are ready, the two lists are here:

• Oil painting materials list
• Acrylic painting materials list

The two places she teaches

Her studio in Southbury

The Wednesday morning and Wednesday evening sessions run at her own studio in Southbury. It is a working studio rather than a classroom, which means her own paintings are on the walls at the half-finished stage nobody photographs. Parking is on site. The address and directions are on the contact page, and she confirms them when you book.

The Stable Studios at Heritage Village

The Wednesday afternoon session runs at The Stable Studios, an arts and crafts facility in a converted stable inside Heritage Village, an active-adult 55+ community in Southbury. Two things people get wrong about it. It is a real studio space with room to work and light to work by, not a folding table in a function room. And it is open to the public: you do not have to live in Heritage Village to take it, though if you do live there you can walk. More about that session, and about starting to paint later in life, on the page for painting classes for seniors.

Other ways to work with her

Two things sit outside the weekly schedule.

Private lessons are scheduled around your week rather than around a timetable, which is the whole point of them. They suit someone coming back to painting after a long gap, someone working toward a show, and anyone whose week will not bend to a fixed slot.

Plein air sessions are painting outdoors, on location, in front of the thing itself. They run periodically through the warmer months as the weather allows. This is her own main practice: she belongs to the Connecticut Plein Air Painters Society and took an Award of Merit at Paint the Town 2025, a juried plein air competition held by the Lyme Art Association in Old Lyme. If the term is new to you, start with what plein air painting means.

Questions people ask before the first class

How to book

Booking is a phone call. The first thing Lorraine needs to know is what you want to paint and whether you have painted before, and that is a two minute conversation rather than a form.

Call (203) 525-1949, say which session you are asking about, and say honestly where you are starting from. If she does not pick up, leave a number and a good time to reach you. If you would rather write first, use the contact page.