Philosophy for Teaching Art

TEACHING PHILOSOPHY

all student work samples are taken from my Drawing I Fundamentals classes

A photorealistic student drawing sample of a woman looking up at twinkling lights. She wears a fur collared coat and trees are visible in the background

A student's expressive charcoal portrait of a woman wrapped in a scarf carrying a sword. Behind the woman, a patterned wallpaper has been painted.

A student's abstract, expressive portrait of a strange face emerging from darkness. The portrait is complexly layered and rendered with a combination of markmaking techniques

My love for teaching comes from the joy of the artistic process and the individuality of each artist’s practice and creative vision. My most frequent and essential encouragement to artists is to view exercises and assignments as explorations rather than evaluations—by not placing their work on a scale of objectivity, but instead noticing developments in their process over time, an artist is free to take creative risk.

A student's rich charcoal landscape of a swirling sky and a tree made up of expressive, whispy lines. The student has used the full range of values to make the piece dynamic

A student work sample of a caringly rendered portrait of a woman covering her eyes with a mitten. The textures have been captured in charcoal using soft and flowing marks.

A student's charcoal drawing purely made of black and white, of a man throwing rolls of toilet paper in every direction. The drawing has a comedic feeling to it, but was also rendered with very careful lines and a sense of specificity to bring the drawing to life.

Frankly, I believe that creative risk, above all else, produces better art—art that is less concerned with what has been done before by artists and more concerned with what is possible for us to do as artists.

A student's charcoal drawing of three faces blended together at the eyes, all looking directly at the viewer. The piece has a sense of introspection and focus, and the figures are rendered with careful marks

$A student's drawing in full color of a laughing figure that has been abstracted the way an image might defract in a glass of water. The result is expressive yet completely clear in its depiction. The figure stands in nature and loose marks have been made to capture a sky full of clouds and a drawing in movement.$

Allowing creative experimentation also means welcoming failure into the process, and thus making an atmosphere where one feels safe to fail.

This further undermines a student’s mentality of “good vs. bad,” and encourages artists not only to develop a sense of community and appreciation among their peers, but also to stretch their technical use of tools and consider what specific attributes and technical feedback are useful to their intentions.

A student's realistic yet expressive portrait of a woman with her head tilted. The student has used dramatic lighting to give the figure a rich glow, and brough in highlights on the hair, forehead, and cheek.

A student's charcoal drawing of a surreal landscape, captured with realisim in its lights and values, with an imaginative subject of a boart flowing through a dark river toward a volcano

A student's photorealistic drawing of flower buds, incorporating the full range of values in charcoal

A student's photorealistic portrait of a man looking directly at the viewer. The portrait incorporates all the values from light to dark, and includes details of eyelashes, hair stubble, reflection in the eyes, and a delicate chain necklace.

A student's abstract drawing of two faces made of stars crying down upon a planet. In the background, an expressive swirl fills the space between the two faces

This leads to richer conversations that blend both formalist and conceptual analysis. Critique and feedback are imbued with meaning when the quality of the work is not in question, but the relationship the work forms between the viewer and the artist.

A photorealistic drawing of a baby looking at the viewer. Textures in the drawing have been rendered with a variety of markmaking, from soft linework on the fabric, shiny highlights on an earring in the baby's ear, and smooth value transitions across the face

A student's expressive drawing of a woman in the bath, with her hands held to hold her head. There are ribbons wrapped around her arms, and a heart is drawn under the surface of the water

While I now focus on teaching undergraduate students, my formative experiences with teaching have been with novices. My first teaching positions were, respectively, working as a children’s ceramics teacher at the South Bend Museum of Art, and working as a Creative Arts Program Assistant at the Dana Farber Cancer Institute in Boston. As different as these two programs and their members were, their common thread can be traced to the true root of the term “amateur”: one that has a marked fondness for an activity; a love for growth and knowledge.

The children at the museum, in all their delightful chaos, opened my mind to the byproducts of following one’s creative vision without inhibitions; embracing the natural individuality of expression as essential to artistic practice. I carry this with me both in my own work and in my encouragement to students of any age.

A student's portrait of an elderly man with glasses. Details such as the wrinkles in his skin, the highlights on his glasses, and linework to convey the texture of the shirt show a technical mastery

A student's drawing of a pepper with dramatic shadows and highlights, and precise yet rich detailwork on the surface of the pepper.

From the Creative Arts Center, I noticed how extending a patient’s knowledge of technique equips them to act on this creative expression with confidence. The ability to articulate with clarity in visual language allows for any creator to more fully embrace their work, recognizing it as a sincere reflection of their intentions.

A student's expressive portrait of a man looking at the viewer, with a rich and full use of subtractive value to bring the drawing to life. The man's hair has a lot of volume, and loose yet detailed lineworok to capture its movement. His eyes have a vivid expression, and the drawing shows a great level of care and detail

A student's self portrait rendered in ink-dip pen. The piece is a surreal collection of illustrations blending in and out of the figure—a bird looks down at her stippled nose, wings come from out of her head, in the two wings are two monks and a many-branched tree, a man peeks out from behind a curl of hair, leaves blend into the hair with careful linework, and a long crane stretches across her neck. The portrait shows a deep dedication of time in the thousands of carefully rendered lines to capture a full value range.

In teaching a balance of creative play and technical craft, we foster artists with sustainable creative practices and equip them with the practical skills to experiment and develop rich new work.