Everything is made up of or emits energy. How can we both utilize and visualize its presence? This course expands the practice of drawing to include not only alternative materials and methods but also addresses the energy of the body itself as an instrument. The course material will include an introduction to embodied social justice practices and creative methodologies in the fields of quantum mechanics, neuroscience, education and philosophy. We will discuss the work of artists such as Adrian Piper, Joseph Bueys, Taisha Paggett, Helen Mirra, Mirko Ilic, and Marina Abramović, among others, as we utilize the energy of the body to enact an expanded drawing practice.

Painting has long sought to capture other spaces, whether they are threshold zones, fantastical landscapes, sites of difference, or hidden aspects of the everyday. This class offers students the chance to explore territories both real and imagined through discrete painting projects that connect to their unique interests. Drawing inspiration from Michel Foucault, N.K. Jemisin, J.G. Ballard, and artists like Julie Mehretu, Vilhelm Hammershøi, and those working in illustration and the popular arts, the class encourages students to both imagine and observe more keenly while learning the materials and debates of painting. Through a series of readings, studio visits, field trips and critiques, the class will explore the other spaces that painting makes legible while revealing the otherness of our own.

Painting and humor are strange bedfellows, sharing many of the same conceptual structures, social pressures and critical possibilities. From Arcimboldo, Hogarth and Daumier, to more recent figures like Jamian Juliano-Villani, Emily Mae Smith, Mark Thomas Gibson and others, artists have employed humor to critique the status quo as well as entertain the viewer. But what is it that makes things funny? Charting a path through some influential theories of humor and some challenging, yes, funny projects, this painting class asks students to explore humor and painting in many of their various guises. Whether in the form of abjection, the grotesque, slapstick, deadpan, irony or satire, this class asks students to take humor quite seriously, analyzing its subtle structures while exploring the materials and debates of painting and making funny work along the way.

The word 'painting,' is both a noun (I made a painting) and a verb (I love painting). The prefix 'trans-' suggests a movement across, beyond, through, or on the other side of something. Through playfully attaching the prefix trans- to painting, this course invites students to investigate modes and methods of painting that extend across, beyond, and through traditional formal parameters, while simultaneously drawing on various trans- prefixed words as subject matter. What could it mean to make a transnational, transitional, or transgender painting? Is there a difference between a painting that is about translation, verses a painting that translates? Or a difference between a painting that is about transmutation verses a painting that undergoes transmutation during the process of becoming? Furthermore, what is the artist’s role in all of this? Projects will provide a platform for students to explore expanded parameters of painting, at first within the illusionistic space of the 2D frame, and quickly opening painting up beyond the parameters of the frame, into sculpture, installation, and performative experiments. Discussions and assignments will be grounded in readings, significant art historical references, visits to current gallery exhibitions, and weekly exposure to relevant contemporary practices, including the work of Jonathan Lyndon Chase, Jutta Koether, Caitlin Cherry, Leidy Churchman, Adrian Piper, Byron Kim, Mike Cloud, Molly Zuckerman Hartung, KC Crow Maddux, Cassils, Kara Walker, Ghada Amer, Katharina Grosse, David Hammons, and Gilda Snowden among many others. Students will be encouraged to experiment and work outside of their comfort zone, with ample room to pursue individual material interests and approaches to painting.