In all classes, my approach is characterized by an attempt to cover what is academic while holding on to a special love for that which can confound or transcend academia. I dislike the idea of the artist as prima donna and encourage students to understand the necessity for grueling effort, and to respect and emulate all people who build their lifestyle around a strong work ethic.
As a teacher, I am simultaneously the most important and least important person in the room. I try to manage and bring the class together without creating a restrictive environment. A delicate balance must be reached in how much and when to interject. I love teaching and believe that making art is important. When students respond to passion, they also begin to understand commitment.
LIFE DRAWING: My over-arching conviction is that the life drawing room must be "alive" and that the idea of human depicting human is, in itself, potent and provocative. In beginning life drawing, I follow a sequential development that presents different methods of approaching figurative form, while emphasizing the act of drawing and the language inherent to the practice of drawing. Later, I encourage, and even orchestrate, a synthesis of these different "ways of seeing" so that students develop the groundwork and comprehensive skills that typify strong, traditional draftsmanship.
PAINTING: I try to respond to the challenge of providing structure in the curriculum without reducing the complications of painting to formula. Over fifteen thousand years of history has produced a rich and varied painting vocabulary in which everything has meaning. Painting has the ability to painstakingly represent, creating illusions of this and other worldly realities yet the painting process, itself, must be understood as an issue of content, alluding to mind-state and the differing components of human nature.
Simple paint, toxic and sticky, is difficult to manage. Therefore in Painting I, much time is spent overcoming materials. I ask students to paint fast, slow, thick and thin. I introduce the grammar of materials, slowly, over the course of the first semester. I use slide lectures to emphasize the elements of each project and to analyze paintings from the past and present. Today, the instruction of painting is defensive in posturing against a perceived inheritance of white, male hegemony and Eurocentric cultural patrimony. I strive to show how developments in the discipline are played out in third-world countries and in the art of women. I intend to continue an effort to internationalize the study of painting and develop lectures on artists who test conventions while using traditional materials.
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The University of Kansas School of Fine Arts Lawrence, KS 66045 785/864-3421 |
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