Where do Paintings Come From

Prerequisites: ANY ONE OF THE FOLLOWING: ARTDES 309: Figure Painting, ARTDES 357: Painting and the Artificial Eye.

Description: This course focuses on the generation of paintings to explore how images and ideas emerge from an encounter between a physical knowledge of the materials, an external stimulus, and the skills and desires that an individual artist brings to the encounter. Students are given four separate problems to address, each requiring a process of informal exploration directed toward creating four fully developed projects. The problems address different aspects of a possible painting practice as aspects of content: the physical constraints of the material and the physical substrate; the use of invented pattern and strategies of repetition, call and response; the deployment of imaging technologies; and the collisions of different visual vocabularies within one image experience. Students are also responsible for researching generative processes in the work of contemporary artists and making presentations on their research to the class.

Frequency: This course is typically offered in the fall term of even-numbered years, though scheduling may vary according to future term circumstances.