Introducing PRIMER: A New Foundation for Emerging Painters
- Martin Kinnear Studio
- Jul 17
- 3 min read
Whether you're navigating your undergraduate studies, stepping into postgraduate research, or simply starting your journey with paint, PRIMER is here to meet you where you are — and help take you where you need to go.
Developed by the Martin Kinnear Studio alongside Martin’s own MA Painting studies at the Royal College of Art— the world’s leading university for painting — PRIMER is a uniquely crafted program designed to guide and support emerging painters as they define and develop a personal, sustainable studio practice.
What is PRIMER?
PRIMER isn’t a traditional painting course. It’s a foundational thinking and making program for serious artists at the start of their journey — a program that challenges you not just to paint, but to understand why you paint, whatyou're painting for, and how to explore your medium with intent.
Whether you're:
an undergraduate refining your direction,
a postgraduate rethinking your medium, or
a newcomer starting from scratch —
PRIMER provides the structure, insight, and critical tools to develop a meaningful, self-directed practice.
This is not about learning to paint like someone else. It’s about learning to ask the right questions:
What do I want to say with paint?
How do I make material choices that reflect my ideas?
What does a practice that’s truly mine look like?
Case Study: Bacon and Saville – Materiality as Ideation
In the world of contemporary painting, few artists illustrate the power of materiality better than Francis Bacon and Jenny Saville. While they differ in generation, subject, and technique, both have built practices where the handling of paint becomes a direct extension of their conceptual intent — a key principle we explore in PRIMER.
Francis Bacon used paint almost violently — pushing, scraping, and distorting flesh into blurred, existential forms. His use of dry brushes, smeared oils, and the raw grain of unprimed canvas created tension between violence and vulnerability. Material for Bacon wasn't just a vehicle — it was a metaphor. The smudged, disrupted surface was the psychological content.
Jenny Saville, while also working with the human body, takes a different approach. Her surfaces are thick, layered, and monumental — built with oil paint that mimics the weight and complexity of flesh. She allows the material to speak viscerally, constructing and deconstructing her forms in a way that feels almost surgical. Her material choices — scale, viscosity, gesture — deliver her feminist and corporeal ideation directly.
Where they align:Both use materiality as language. They are not interested in paint as a passive substance but as an active communicator of psychological and physical truths.
Where they differ:
Bacon emphasizes fragmentation and trauma through subtraction, erasure, and distortion.
Saville builds mass and presence through accumulation, gesture, and excess.
Yet both artists prove that a distinctive material voice can be the clearest expression of a painter’s ideas.
Why This Matters in PRIMER
In PRIMER, you won’t just be taught how to manipulate materials — you’ll be challenged to make material decisions that align with your ideas. Just as Bacon and Saville each developed idiosyncratic approaches to paint that carried their meaning forward, you’ll begin to understand how to use your materials as a personal and conceptual language.
You’ll explore:
How to experiment purposefully
How to read and reflect on your own process
How to identify what your materials are saying — and what they could say with different handling?
Ready to Begin?
If you're ready to move past technique-driven instruction and start building a practice that’s truly your own, PRIMERoffers the mentorship, critical framework, and studio engagement you need.
Your studio is your lab. Your work is your research. Let PRIMER be your launchpad.
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