Painting’s Doubt: A Studio Course

Paint palette icon accompanied by the words "Aesthetics & Culture" with crimson border.

Matt Saunders
Gen Ed 1114     |    Last offered Fall 2023

How does a hands-on practice of image making (painting) lead us to perceive, represent and inhabit our world differently?

Painting is an engagement between the self and the world. It is a practice of embodied making, and, as a language outside of words, can think around conditioned understanding. This introductory studio art course proposes learning to paint as a new experience of relating to the world, and through painting we will investigate not only what we have to say, but what we have to see.

Paul Cezanne, Study of Trees, c.1904
Paul Cezanne, Study of Trees, c.1904
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, The Lois Orwell Collection (1998.305)
Barkley Hendricks, October’s Gone…Goodnight, 1973
Barkley Hendricks, October’s Gone…Goodnight, 1973
Harvard Art Museums/Fogg Museum, Richard Norton Memorial Fund (2010.2)

Studio assignments in small sections are complemented by weekly lectures, visiting artist presentations, readings and visits to Harvard’s collections. The primary materials for this course will be oil on canvas, with some excursions into drawing and work on a paper. No experience is necessary, except a willingness to make a mess.