“ I want to teach people to enjoy their art but at the same time to understand that it is a serious study…my main concern is with art. I am not here to teach people to make conventional paintings but to make them realize that there are disciplines which affect our evaluation of what is happening in the art world. I want to teach people to concern themselves with the values that are inherent in art and in what I call painting. Everyone is encouraged to work on what they wish and I arrange special projects for those people who wish to have a better understanding of the explosion of possibilities provided by “modern art”. What I am doing is creating a serious alternative to the university and art school. A different learning environment which is more flexible, more all-embracing without all the stress of examinations and diplomas and degrees. My studio is a place where people can work simply for the pleasure of it. Art works and art objects are not made for capital investment. You might as well put your heart in the deep freeze. To learn properly people must be fully engaged in what they are doing. And it is the teachers duty to keep them engaged. Art is concerned with the whole of man, the whole being is involved.”
“One of the most difficult lessons I have had to learn as an artist and teacher is that I do not know how to make an artwork, nor how to teach other people to do it. The difficulty has to do with getting used to being lost, and of working in the dark. The teaching consists of being a guide, it is more of an initiation than an education, and consists of leading, and being lead, towards the threshold of the unconditional”.
Bill Ainslie