Paint Big- September 2025 ~ 3 Full Days- Santa Fe, NM
Paint Big – Santa Fe, NM
September 5–7, 2025 | 10:00 AM – 4:30 PM Daily
3 Full Days | $785 | All Materials Provided
Limited to 8 Participants
Location: Lauren’s 1,000 sq. ft. private studio, just 10 minutes from the Santa Fe Plaza
Step Boldly Into Large-Scale Painting
Now in its 9th year, Paint Big is Lauren’s most celebrated workshop—a dynamic, immersive experience that invites you to work fearlessly on a large canvas using mixed media. Whether you're an intermediate or advanced artist, this class is designed to gently push boundaries, stir up creativity, and unlock bold new approaches to your art practice.
Over three full days in beautiful Santa Fe, you’ll create a powerful large-scale painting (approx. 60” x 60”), with all materials provided—including your unstretched canvas, paints, collage tools, and more. You’ll also gain access to Lauren’s Paint Big Video Course, a virtual resource to revisit long after the workshop ends.
What to Expect
Over the course of three immersive days in Lauren’s inspiring Santa Fe studio, you’ll experience a powerful blend of structure, freedom, experimentation, and support—designed to reconnect you with the intuitive joy of making art on a grand scale.
Day 1: Enter the Creative Zone
We’ll begin by grounding ourselves with a series of loose, idea-generating exercises that spark imagination and gently nudge you out of your usual rhythm. Lauren will guide you through:
Tapping into your personal symbols and visual language
Exploring color, shape, and mark-making with energy and play
Working intuitively across a large canvas, embracing scale and movement
Expect to let go of “preciousness” and start building a foundation of expressive layers using mixed-media tools provided in the studio—from oil sticks and pastels to acrylics, collage, and beyond.
Day 2: Deepen, Layer & Expand
With your canvas already in motion, Day Two is about building momentum and complexity.
Add, subtract, and refine through cutting, pasting, painting, scraping, drawing, and editing
Learn to make bold decisions while also trusting the slower evolution of form
Explore contrast, composition, color relationships, and textural nuance
Receive individual guidance from Lauren to help refine your process and clarify your visual voice
This is a day to stretch—physically, creatively, and conceptually.
Day 3: Refine, Resolve, and Reflect
The final day focuses on integrating everything you’ve discovered. With Lauren’s support, you’ll begin to bring your piece into a state of completion—or creative pause—by:
Fine-tuning your composition with attention to shape, rhythm, and balance
Exploring personal narrative, symbolism, and storytelling within the work
Reflecting on your process and learning how to carry these techniques forward into your own studio practice
We'll wrap with a shared viewing of each artist’s work, celebrating what’s emerged over these three days of brave, big, and beautiful painting.
SEE THE FULL DESCRIPTION + DETAILS BELOW
Paint Big – Santa Fe, NM
September 5–7, 2025 | 10:00 AM – 4:30 PM Daily
3 Full Days | $785 | All Materials Provided
Limited to 8 Participants
Location: Lauren’s 1,000 sq. ft. private studio, just 10 minutes from the Santa Fe Plaza
Step Boldly Into Large-Scale Painting
Now in its 9th year, Paint Big is Lauren’s most celebrated workshop—a dynamic, immersive experience that invites you to work fearlessly on a large canvas using mixed media. Whether you're an intermediate or advanced artist, this class is designed to gently push boundaries, stir up creativity, and unlock bold new approaches to your art practice.
Over three full days in beautiful Santa Fe, you’ll create a powerful large-scale painting (approx. 60” x 60”), with all materials provided—including your unstretched canvas, paints, collage tools, and more. You’ll also gain access to Lauren’s Paint Big Video Course, a virtual resource to revisit long after the workshop ends.
What to Expect
Over the course of three immersive days in Lauren’s inspiring Santa Fe studio, you’ll experience a powerful blend of structure, freedom, experimentation, and support—designed to reconnect you with the intuitive joy of making art on a grand scale.
Day 1: Enter the Creative Zone
We’ll begin by grounding ourselves with a series of loose, idea-generating exercises that spark imagination and gently nudge you out of your usual rhythm. Lauren will guide you through:
Tapping into your personal symbols and visual language
Exploring color, shape, and mark-making with energy and play
Working intuitively across a large canvas, embracing scale and movement
Expect to let go of “preciousness” and start building a foundation of expressive layers using mixed-media tools provided in the studio—from oil sticks and pastels to acrylics, collage, and beyond.
Day 2: Deepen, Layer & Expand
With your canvas already in motion, Day Two is about building momentum and complexity.
Add, subtract, and refine through cutting, pasting, painting, scraping, drawing, and editing
Learn to make bold decisions while also trusting the slower evolution of form
Explore contrast, composition, color relationships, and textural nuance
Receive individual guidance from Lauren to help refine your process and clarify your visual voice
This is a day to stretch—physically, creatively, and conceptually.
Day 3: Refine, Resolve, and Reflect
The final day focuses on integrating everything you’ve discovered. With Lauren’s support, you’ll begin to bring your piece into a state of completion—or creative pause—by:
Fine-tuning your composition with attention to shape, rhythm, and balance
Exploring personal narrative, symbolism, and storytelling within the work
Reflecting on your process and learning how to carry these techniques forward into your own studio practice
We'll wrap with a shared viewing of each artist’s work, celebrating what’s emerged over these three days of brave, big, and beautiful painting.
SEE THE FULL DESCRIPTION + DETAILS BELOW
What to Bring / Packing List
All core materials are provided, but we recommend bringing the following to enhance your experience and comfort:
Essentials:
Apron or painting clothes (things you don’t mind getting messy!)
Comfortable shoes (you’ll be on your feet and moving around)
Water bottle + snacks/lunch (we’ll take a midday break, fridge + microwave available)
Notebook or sketchbook for notes and visual journaling
Any personal ephemera, photocopies, or collage materials you may want to incorporate (optional)
A few favorite brushes or tools if you like to work with specific items (optional)
TESTIMONIALS
I spent the first week of May in Santa Fe, my third art retreat with my friend Diane. We immersed ourselves in journaling, painting, visiting galleries and talking non-stop about art, creative process and our challenges, desires and directions.
We set up the dining room table in our condo as our pre and post-class painting area. We'd wake up in the morning, eat, dress, go to the workshop and paint big, eat, then have a glass of wine or cup of tea and paint small until we went to bed.
Each day in the workshop I created (pretty much) a whole new painting. On the previous day's painting!
One of the most valuable parts of a workshop like this one is working alongside other artists. It really brought it home that I am not the only one who experiences highs and lows as I create. Almost every artist in the room had to reinvent each day. They took risks that didn't work, then reinvented and tried something else. It was amazing to both observe and participate in that process, because even though I invent and reinvent on my own in my studio, the sheer scale of a whole room full of artists doing the same alongside me was incredible. Such intense energy!
All the stimulation and perceptions from the week are still percolating inside. As my considerations lead to insights about where my art practice is heading and why, I'll share some of them with you.
-Jeanne Beck
Painting Big with Lauren Mantecon
I visited Santa Fe at the end of April specifically to take Lauren Mantecon's Painting Big/Anything Goes workshop at her studio. It was an enlightening and productive experience - much to recommend for all painters. Lauren is a wonderful instructor who knows how to guide but not hover. I highly recommend any of her classes.
-Diane S
