Texas Hill Country Atelier: ‘It’s not intimidating. It’s just all the stuff you never thought you could learn. And you can.’

Holly White-Gehrt and Matthew Fielder are fighting a misconception.

Artistic talent, they insist, is not a magical gift that some people are born with and most are not. It is a skill. Like most skills, it can be taught, practiced, and developed — if the right methods are used.

“What we’re really offering is something that used to be in the art academies,” White-Gehrt said Tuesday on Lead Live. “It’s not intimidating. It’s just all the stuff you never thought you could learn. And you can.”

White-Gehrt and Fielder are the co-founders of the Texas Hill Country Atelier, a Kerrville-based fine arts instruction program devoted to reviving the classical drawing and painting techniques of the Renaissance academies. The core program accommodates exactly 12 students, each with their own dedicated studio space with 24/7 access. One spot is currently open.

The atelier’s approach is methodical and cumulative — students learn to see and render light, form, and proportion the way 15th-century Florentine artists did, before the art world decided that feeling was more important than craft. Fielder compared it to solving a complex puzzle.

“I think we all have to escape the world from time to time in order to keep our sanity,” he said. “Art is like the best Sudoku puzzle you’ve ever done.”

White-Gehrt described what drawing does for her personally: “It helps me figure out what I care about — what I really care about. It goes into my deepest beliefs and values. It just gives me a comfort level that nothing else does.”

The atelier’s programming extends well beyond the core class. A free Third Tuesday Talk series begins at 4:30 p.m. with refreshments and features working artists and academics. Recent talks have included UTSA professor Rebecca Bert on dynamic composition and the golden mean; Bert will return this fall to teach a five-week botanical drawing class. A sold-out four-day, $780 workshop with Dallas master Michael Mentler — described as a modern-day Leonardo da Vinci for his ability to draw complex human anatomy entirely from imagination — is coming up. In December, King’s College London graduate David Heskin visits for an oil mediums and paint-making workshop.

The organization is applying for its first grant from the Texas Commission on the Arts to expand and record the free talk series. Youth programming — which struggled for registrations post-flood — will pivot next summer to use sci-fi, fantasy, and anime art as an entry point for teaching teens foundational perspective, anatomy, and light.

Core program enrollment and Third Tuesday talk schedule: texashillcountryatelier.com.