PAINTING
“Art is like magic, an illusion created by the force of humanity. Our choices in life can be amazing portals for adventure. For me, these portals present themselves through the process of painting: researching potent images, configuring them on canvas, and struggling to imbue them with a sense of myself and my own wonder at the enormous complexity of the world.” -Gabe Brown
“Keep painting your demons.” Jack Beal
Painting courses reinforce and further develop skills with composition, drawing, and color acquired in foundation courses. We also learn traditional techniques with oils or acrylics—blending, layering, drybrush/scumbling, glazing—and experiment with more recent painting developments like transfers, stencils, collage, paint skins/appliques, and mixed media. We learn to build stretchers and stretch canvases, cradle panels, apply grounds, and mount paper. In everything--through conversations, critiques, and carefully constructed assignments--we explore how all of these formal choices help us communicate and how they build and influence meaning.
Every semester we visit an art museum, painting exhibition, or painter’s studio. Classes are exposed to visiting painters, as well. Many students choose to join the department’s annual trip to Chicago, where they see world-class contemporary artists, the greats of art history, and explore arts careers. All these experiences help us develop a painter’s “eye” and increase our awareness of what is possible as well as what painting has been historically.
Early assignments build a ladder of skills, each focusing on one major aspect of painting: color/value, surface and texture, paint application techniques, creating spatial illusions. Some projects have an element of master study, to learn from and create a dialogue with important painters.
Having built a good foundation, as we continue assignments become more and more open, and each painter is encouraged to find and develop natural strengths and a personal vocabulary of images and ideas. Advanced painters propose their semester project, do research to support it, create a body of work, and present and exhibit or publish some of it. Our alums are painters in New York City and Chicago, Master of Fine Arts students at major art schools, arts writers, and accomplished creative professionals in art education, art therapy, arts management, architecture, and many other fields.
“Art is like magic, an illusion created by the force of humanity. Our choices in life can be amazing portals for adventure. For me, these portals present themselves through the process of painting: researching potent images, configuring them on canvas, and struggling to imbue them with a sense of myself and my own wonder at the enormous complexity of the world.” -Gabe Brown
“Keep painting your demons.” Jack Beal
Painting courses reinforce and further develop skills with composition, drawing, and color acquired in foundation courses. We also learn traditional techniques with oils or acrylics—blending, layering, drybrush/scumbling, glazing—and experiment with more recent painting developments like transfers, stencils, collage, paint skins/appliques, and mixed media. We learn to build stretchers and stretch canvases, cradle panels, apply grounds, and mount paper. In everything--through conversations, critiques, and carefully constructed assignments--we explore how all of these formal choices help us communicate and how they build and influence meaning.
Every semester we visit an art museum, painting exhibition, or painter’s studio. Classes are exposed to visiting painters, as well. Many students choose to join the department’s annual trip to Chicago, where they see world-class contemporary artists, the greats of art history, and explore arts careers. All these experiences help us develop a painter’s “eye” and increase our awareness of what is possible as well as what painting has been historically.
Early assignments build a ladder of skills, each focusing on one major aspect of painting: color/value, surface and texture, paint application techniques, creating spatial illusions. Some projects have an element of master study, to learn from and create a dialogue with important painters.
Having built a good foundation, as we continue assignments become more and more open, and each painter is encouraged to find and develop natural strengths and a personal vocabulary of images and ideas. Advanced painters propose their semester project, do research to support it, create a body of work, and present and exhibit or publish some of it. Our alums are painters in New York City and Chicago, Master of Fine Arts students at major art schools, arts writers, and accomplished creative professionals in art education, art therapy, arts management, architecture, and many other fields.
