Libby Anson is a writer, artist, creative and professional development coach and lecturer.
She studied Fine Art at the university of Newcastle-Upon-Tyne (1980-84), before going on to undertake postgraduate Art Gallery & Museum Studies at Manchester University. She has since worked in the public and private gallery sectors, curating exhibitions and working as a gallery educationalist. From 1990 she has been a freelance art critic and a member of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA) since 1993; her writing has been published in a variety of national and international publications.
Libby co-authored the A-Z of Art and has written and contributed to a number of exhibition catalogues. She has edited art historical books, practical drawing guides and art education publications.
She has also been a fine art lecturer and creative professional development coach for over twenty years. She currently works at the Glasgow School of Art as Student Employability & Enterprise Manager, while maintaining her own writing and fine art practice.
Libby's practical work focuses on painting and drawing, having also specialised during her studies in art history and in printmaking - particularly fine etching. She continues her artistic practice which also includes performing and writing for theatre.
Her work as a critic followed on from her management at the end of the '80s of the commercial Creaser Gallery, Portobello, London, concentrating on contemporary abstract painting. Her written work has been published in Art Monthly, Contemporary Art Magazine, UNTITLED, Taïde (Hungary) and Material (Sweden) among other magazines, producing mainly exhibition reviews and artists' interviews.
She has been a lecturer in painting, life drawing, art criticism and professional development for various UK universities and has also worked as a life model. Her interest in the creative and professional development of artists, designers and writers has informed both her coaching, which she has delivered for various national arts and literary organizations as well as individual creatives, and also her current work with student employability and entrepreneurship.
Stephen Farthing studied at St Martin's School of Art, London (1969-73) before taking his Masters Degree in Painting at the Royal College of Art, London (1973-76).
His teaching career began as a Lecturer in Painting at Canterbury College of Art (1977-79), after which he was a Tutor in painting at the Royal College of Art, London from 1980 to 1985. He went on to become Head of Painting (1985-87) and Head of Department of Fine Art (1987-89) at West Surrey College of Art and Design. From 1990 he was Ruskin Master at the Ruskin School of Fine Art and Professorial Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford until 2000.
Stephen Farthing has exhibited extensively in one man shows since his first solo exhibition held at the Royal College of Art Gallery, London in 1977. His work, representing Britain, was shown at the Sao Paulo Biennale in 1989, leading to many further solo shows in the UK and abroad, including South America and Japan. He has also participated in many group exhibitions since 1975, including the John Moores Liverpool Exhibitions, in which he was a Prize Winner in 1976, 1980, 1982, 1987, 1991, 1993, 1997 and 1999. He was represented by The Edward Totah Gallery in London and New York until Edwards death in 1997.
Farthing was Artist in Residence at the Hayward Gallery, London in 1989. He was elected Royal Academician in 1998 and in 2000 was made an Emeritus Fellow of St Edmund Hall, Oxford. In 2000, Duckworth published, The Intelligent Persons Guide to Modern Art. He was executive director of the New York Academy of Art from September 2000 until August 2004 when he was appointed Rootstein Hopkins Research Chair of Drawing at the university of Arts London, which he has held until 2017. Stephen now lives and works in New York and London.
In summary, this course is brilliantly designed to reach a wide range audience in terms of background, and run by an enthusiastic team, from Lilly in support to my brilliant tutor Stephen Farthing, who also wrote a must-have book "Art: the whole story" (on Amazon).
Montreal, Canada