Dates: Sundays June 19, 26, July 3, 10, 17, 24, 31
Time: 6 - 8 pm New York EST / 11 pm - 1 am London UK time / 12 midnight - 2 am Brussels Europe time
Admission: $195 / $165 (Patreon Members)

All classes will also be recorded and archived for students who cannot make that time

For those inspired by the morbid and anatomical things of this world and the next! The human body and the history of how it has been understood through dissection, illustration, anatomical sculpture and preservation is a rich source of inspiration, an inexhaustible supply of emotive imagery, and a view on our personal mortality which can be endlessly interpreted through art. This course presents an online adventure beneath the skin, with drawing, collage, painting and sculpture. Your guide will be Eleanor Crook, sculptor, medical artist and anatomical expressionist. The course will provide both a guided tour of anatomical art history, famous medical museum collections and factual anatomical teaching, allowing you to find personal means of expression and work in a variety of media, resulting in six art pieces for your portfolio, parlour or cabinet of curiosities.

Each two hour session begins with a highly illustrated presentation, followed by an anatomy lesson and group art session in which we work on an art piece in a different medium each week. Booklist, museum list, materials list and Youtube playlist all included! Techniques will be demonstrated and even invented! Our travel explorations may be limited by the current Pandemic, but Eleanor aims to bring the museum, the anatomical wax collection and the atelier to your Zoom screen insofar as possible, so that a community of like minds of varying experience can develop a whole new BODY of anatomical art.

Session overviews: further details and materials list will be supplied after registration.

1: Talk: The Mechanism of Life in Death : the medical museum and dissection. Our first introduction to the territory – how human remains past and present are studied, displayed, used as teaching tools and collected, and the atmosphere of the anatomical environment. Then Drawing Session

2. Talk: Exquisitely made: a history of anatomical illustration in 2d. The collaboration of artists and scientists is nothing new – for centuries surgeons anatomists and artists worked together to make visually rich atlases of the body. First-hand Observation – literally Autopsy – was a highly prized skill and artwork formed a moral commentary on mortality and embodiment. Then Monoprint session

3. Talk: Sculpting in human remains: from Fragonard's Rider to Von Hagens, with a discussion of the ethics of medical art. Sometimes a statue is just not enough and a medical artist uses the Real Thing. Fascinating and macabre, real anatomies are discussed from a technical, moral and aesthetic point of view. Then, Collage session.

4. Talk: Contemporary anatomy art - a morbid practice. It’s a busy field of diverse artists reinventing how we see our own insides – graphic arts, sculptures, animatronics, experimental surgery, Bioart, performance, you name it. A survey of right now. Then, Painting Session.

5. Talk: Immaculate bodies in Wax: anatomical wax collections and how they were made, with materials shown live in Eleanor's workshop. All over the world we find mysterious anatomical collections of perfectly sculpted intricate wax bodies, a wonder in their time and a half-forgotten miracle of morbid technique. Eleanor has worked with these collections as conservator and reveals some sculptors’ secrets. Then, Wax or Plastiline Sculpting session.

6. Building the perfect beast: Anatomy , collage and assemblage, from Frankenstein through prosthetics to Transformers, how the body can be dismantled, rearranged and rebuilt with parts to make new bioart and morbidly inventive forms. Then, Assemblage 3D object making session.

To take this course you do not have to be expert in drawing, anatomy , art history or painting – the aim is to learn, observe, try new approaches, express morbid subjects in detail or with broad strokes, use found images and objects, enjoy the mystery of the creative process and see what comes out. All experiences and backgrounds are welcome and an experimental, open approach will be encouraged. Work can be carried on between sessions if you wish. Sharing work and work in progress, busting through blocks and perfectionism and gloating over our results, is the plan.

Eleanor Crook is a sculptor and wax modeler who works between the UK and several international medical museums. She is an art tutor a number of UK's major art schools and an art educator in various European medical museums. She trained in sculpture at Central St Martins and the Royal Academy Schools, working from life and as a medical artist in the dissecting room. She is artist in residence at King’s College’s Gordon Museum of Pathology and the Vrolik Museum Amsterdam. Her work is in the collections of the Science Museum London, Gordon Museum of Pathology Guy's Hospital, the Museum of Pathology at the University of Padua, the Royal Pharmaceutical Society London and the Hunterian Museum Royal College of Surgeons of England. Her specialism is handmade effigies, baroque bronze and eerie lifelike waxes.

Images, in order: Wax anatomical model by Clemente Susini, Museo de la Specola, Florence, late 18th century; Ink and Watercolour after a wax anatomical figure by Eleanor Crook, 2020; Skeleton Painter in his Atelier by James Ensor, 1896, Royal Museum of FIne Arts Antwerp