All OCA’s course materials have been written by experienced professional artists. Here is a selection of our course authors and the courses they have produced:

Gaynor Goffe

Gaynor Goffe has a BA Hons from London University and has taught for 30 years (24 of them teaching calligraphy). She trained in Calligraphy and Heraldry Illumination at Reigate School of Art & Design and has taught at all levels up to degree level, in art schools and on residential courses throughout the country and overseas. Her two books, Calligraphy Made Easy and Calligraphy Step by Step (with Ravenscroft) were published in 1994. Her work has appeared in numerous calligraphy books and exhibitions. She combines teaching with working freelance on commissions and producing work for exhibitions sales.

Author of the 'Calligraphy' course.

Stephen Taylor

Stephen Taylor studied at Leeds University where he was taught painting by Paul Gopal Choudhury (Slade) after which he studied ‘Perception and Technique in John Constable’ as an art history post-graduate student, at Essex University and as a visiting student at Yale University, USA. After two years as Resident Artist at Felsted School in Essex a successful show persuaded him to turn from art history to pursue a career as a painter. Until recently, Stephen taught painting and design history part-time for various institutions including: NADFAS, Cambridge University extra mural board, Colchester Art School, the Inchbald School of Design (short course director) and the Open College of the Arts (Painting Course Leader and author of ‘Painting 1: Watercolour’ and ‘Painting 3: Advanced’). He also recently co-ordinated a feasibility study for an art school for the Government of Dubai. His painting initially covered a variety of themes including portraiture, shooting pictures and landscape. Early exhibitions included a one-man show at the Oakwood Gallery, Aldeburgh 1993, Walton Contemporary, London 1994. Since the mid-90s Stephen has concentrated on modern landscape, combining traditional oil techniques with digital analysis to produce paintings which are vividly real and yet at the same time unmistakably works of selection and art. Larger pieces involve integrating many different kinds of study and can take up to three years to complete.

Author of the 'Painting 1: Watercolour' Course.

Michael Freeman

Michael Freeman is one of the world’s most highly respected professional photographers. He is widely published, with more than 80 books to his credit including the classic 35mm Handbook (over 1.5 million copies sold). Recent publications include Spirit of Asia, Angkor: Cities and Temples (both Thames and Hudson), Japan Modern and The Modern Japanese Garden (both Mitchell Beazley). Michael has now produced a unique new series of guide books for the digital photographer and these are published by ILEX, who are digital media specialists. He has worked on commissions for many well-known publishing clients, including Time-Life, Reader’s Digest, Condé Nast Traveller and GEO. He is also the principle photographer for the Smithsonian Magazine. Visit his website at http://michaelfreemanphoto.com.

Author of OCA's Photography courses.

Nigel McLoughlin

Nigel McLoughlin holds an MA with distinction in Creative Writing (Poetry) and a PhD in Creative Writing both from Lancaster University. He has been a Creative Writing tutor for over eight years, working with all levels of student from absolute beginners to those completing their MA degrees. He has also been involved in design and development of Creative Writing programmes up to MA level working with a number of third-level institutions. He co-edited Breaking The Skin in 2002 an anthology of new Irish writers published in two volumes by Black Mountain Press. He has three collections of his own poems in print: At The Waters’ Clearing, 2001 (Flambard & Black Mountain Presses), Songs For No Voices, 2004 (Lagan Press) and Blood, 2005 (bluechrome). His work has appeared in many literary journals and anthologies in Ireland, the UK and abroad. He has won or been short-listed for a number of major poetry prizes, and gives readings of his own work. He is a Fellow of the RSA.

Author of the ‘Writing 2: Poetry – Form and Freedom’ course.

Sara Maitland

‘In my career as a writer I have published in an unusually wide range of genres and forms. I have published novels and short-stories; but I have also written a radio play, several stories and two monologue sequences for the radio; a good deal of journalism – usually features and opinion columns; some ‘proper’ non-fiction: theology, biography, a garden history book. I have written some quite odd things as well – a collaborative novel; the texts for paper engineering books (pop-up books for grown-ups); introductions to classic re-prints; and most recently I’ve been working with a photographer on digitally manipulated images where words and pictures are melded together. Sometimes I have devised my projects myself and sometimes I have responded to commissions. The one thing I have never written, and do not expect to write, is autobiography. Nonetheless I have written quite a lot of ‘creative non-fiction’ which is autobiographical. In the early 1980s, feminism spawned a brand new literary form: ‘the collective autobiographical essay’. I’ve even edited two such collections myself (Walking on the Water with Jo Garcia and Very Heaven). An editor picks a subject and then invites a number of writers to contribute an experience-based piece of writing about it. It is a very rich form, the different writers and differing experiences feed off each other, inform each other and create, at its best, a whole which is more than the sum of its individual parts. Not surprisingly the form has been taken up in other quarters, and is now very common.’

Author of the ‘Creative Writing 2: I-Lines’ course

Beth Webb

‘Making ‘Magic’ Happen’ has been devised and written by Beth Webb. She is a professional storyteller and the author of eight children’s fantasy books, Fleabag and the Ring Fire, Fleabag and the Fire Cat, Fleabag and the Ring’s End, Foxdown Wood (included in the Young Book Trust’s recommended reading list for single parent families), The Witch of Wookey Hole, The Magic in the Pool of Making and, for younger children, The Dragons of Kilve and Wanted, One Dragon. Beth has also written three plays for children which have been performed by child actors at the Brewhouse Theatre and Arts Centre in Taunton. An experienced creative writing tutor and teacher of storytelling, Beth works both with adults (especially as part of the OCA) and also with children. She works in schools, festivals, libraries and at Kilve Court Residential Education Centre for Able Children in Somerset. She also runs cross curricular arts projects with people of all ages and abilities. She has an MA in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University College but she says she still can’t believe her luck in being able to spend so much time writing stories and helping other people to do the same. She has no intention of ever doing anything sensible for a living. Her website is www.bethwebb.co.uk.