An introductory course for beginning art majors and non-art majors who are fulfilling a G.E. requirement. This course involves both practical and conceptual issues of drawing, and painting in particular, although many of the ideas we will consider extend to general aspects of artistic production in different times, places, and social conditions. In this respect, the activity of painting and the concepts that underlie it will be given equal attention. Students will be expected to experiment with different drawing and painting media and techniques and to develop painting skills through directed hands-on practice and assigned exercises. It is intended that personal engagement in making paintings be informed by awareness of historical and critical issues that surround the practice, functions, and meanings of visual art.

2016-2020/Fall 2024-Fall 2025, Columbia University, Adjunct Professor: Painting 1, Painting 2 and Figure Painting

“Painting 1” introduces the evolution of the medium of paint, the expansion of color and oil painting techniques. I begin with Stone Age finger painting, or observable objects made with value-based earth tones. I address Impressionism’s hue-based techniques, and then the power of color intensity in Cubism and Modernist abstraction. Class visits have included the Native American Art Museum and Drawing Center. Through foundation assignments, I aim to show that artists of color and female artists overlooked by the western art canon have a profound influence on art history and how any resolute artist can inspire what we do today.

Painting 2: Representation into Abstraction. This 3 Credit class is an in-depth investigation into 20th and 21st ideas and approaches to abstraction in painting. Throughout history, going back to 8000 BC at the dawn of the Neolithic Period, humankind has utilized designs, patterns and abstract representations of the world in rock carvings, pottery and perhaps other surfaces which have now vanished. Abstraction appears in force in Islamic Art, in ancient traditions of Aboriginal and Maori painting and body decoration and on surfaces of boats, architecture and implements throughout cultures in South America, Africa and in the Pacific basin…to name a few.

Figure Painting: This class is an in-depth investigation into ideas and approaches to figuration in painting. We will explore the technical and conceptual approaches towards painting the figure. Experimentation in observation from a sculptural point of view with clay will be a large component of this class. Each week we will do observational studies from a model or sculpted form our imagination pushing preconceived notions of the body. Students will explore weekly painting prompts, the history of paintings technique with the figure to develop their own skill both in 2D and 3D in clay. With readings, fields trips as well to galleries students will gain diverse perspectives to discover their own language with figurative painting.

Summer 2025, Anderson Ranch, Aspen Colorado, From Plein Aire to the Studio: Landscape and Figuration

Exploring contemporary challenges in painting with and on forms through observation. This exciting workshop takes place both outside and in the painting classroom. Students focus on smaller works outdoors, then enter the studio to translate them into larger works while incorporating abstraction and color theory as well as various acrylic painting techniques. Students also get the chance to explore the figure and its place within the pictorial landscape by working from a live model. The focus is primarily live observation, with an exploratory approach to the practice of painting through material experimentation and dyeing of canvas as ways to build space and richness.

2013-Present, Columbia University: Undergraduate and Graduate mentorship

I consistently conduct studio visits, graduate thesis reviews, provide individual artistic feedback on senior projects, do career mentorship and lecture to graduate students and undergrads. Some semesters I choose to work with individual students. I was recently invited to give a seminar on De-Colonized Art Practices to all the departments of the Columbia School of Art to visualize with students what a postcolonial world would like through discussion and meditation.

January 2019-Present, SUNY Purchase College, Adjunct Professor. Courses taught: Color and Colonization, Unsettling the Painted Landscape, Generated Image, Junior Seminar, Junior Studio, Painted Identity, and undergrad/graduate review.

“Decolonizing the Landscape” begins by examining the land on which Purchase College was built through research on the land’s indigenous inhabitants and plein-aire painting. We collaborate with Environmental studies to replace invasive plant garden with native plant gardens. Over the course of the semester, we examine other ways to unsettle colonized notions of space. We do collaborative paintings imagining the campus what the campus would look like if it was more of an egalitarian structure. We practice the traditional European format of painting and deconstruct it using analytic abstraction by various methods such as taking painting off the stretcher, interrupting it with sculpture, ritual, the body, the earth and painting on hand-built ceramic surfaces. Throughout this course we consider how to recycle and dispose of our materials so we do not contribute to pollution and keep a trash journal of how we consume and throw away objects and keep some of trash that inspires artistic alchemy

“Color and Colonization” explores the relationship between resource extraction and a range of chroma in art history. It includes an exploration of alternatives to store bought materials such as organic dyes and pigments to lessen the field’s reliance on commercially purchased items. I investigate color through the Lakota Medicine wheel, Yin Yang and Yoruba cultures. I teach Johannes Itten’s Color Theory of Seven Contrast exercises, which are based in feeling and spirituality. I begin the course “Color and Colonization,” which I have taught several times at different institutions, with cave paintings, made with site-specific earth pigments, which were tied to ritual and responsive to nature. I then discuss how the large vats introduced during the industrial revolution impacted Indigenous communities worldwide. These socio-political processes coincided with trade in cadmium and cobalt, allowing for the expansion of color so characteristic of Impressionism. I conclude by putting together circular color models from many cultures to show contrasting hue, value, and saturation. The aim of this final exercise is to break apart the division between spiritual and experimental approaches and move towards more integrated and sustainable uses of color. Following the Bauhaus technique, I also connect color observation with physical exercise, leading students in a color meditation that I designed with my partner Heidi Howard and the dancer Cynthia Koppe. This parallel deconstruction and corporeal integration give students a much broader understanding of how formal aspects of their work can be decolonized on the level of aesthetics

“Unsettling the Painted Landscape” invites local Native American communities into the classroom to discuss the history of the land on which the campus is located. What history whether Native American or the Black experience is history typically taught ignoring is one of the questions we posed. I lecture about true land management, often collaborating with a school’s sustainability department. I ask students to re-introduce native species back into a landscape and paint from it. Together, we explore alternative approaches to representing the landscape. I emphasize working with nature as a collaborator rather than a tool for surveillance. I want to stop colonizing how we see nature and change not only the cartography of America but our relationship to ecosystems as artists, students, and humanity. Over the course of the semester, I slowly withdraw traditional painting tools like brushes, canvases etc. and replace them with organic/non-organic site-specific materials. But crucial to this prompt is to get students understand what is concept driving the work towards the ecological and how to address this concern globally.

“Generated Image” is a course on how analog draftsmanship can inform digital image making. Afterwards we reverse and print digital prints and employ frottage, collage and other real tactile engagements. This past semester I emphasized documenting and photographing local gardens change through the seasons on campus with Sustainability coordinator Angie Kim. My goal was to get students to see the digital is affected by the organic and we must care for it as artists for our existence to remain possible.

The “Junior Seminar Course” is structured through reading/writing workshops that build conceptual libraries for students to write artist statements for professional/creative development.

"Painted Identity” focuses on portraiture. I assign students projects in abstraction, observation, and the Twin Spirit Project. This project imagines a fuller spectrum of who we are outside of gender binaries. In “Painting Identity,” a course I teach at SUNY Purchase, I build a space for self-analysis because I see the next generation of artists as intersectional to resist categorization and ghettoization. By teaching theories of care, the aesthetics of personal history, practices of Intersectional portraiture, the Twin Spirit portraits, and collaborative self-portraits. Through these models, we investigate the construction of identity and the color code-switching that takes place in painting.

September - Spring 2024: Hunter College Visiting Adjunct Associate Professor and Tutorial advisor: I taught a graduate seminar that I designed titled “Restorying Ecosystems”. The course begins by teaching observational painting nature and extends towards sculpture installation outdoor practice. We visited my outdoor garden sculpture at Wavehill cultural center to explore growing nature plants and the venues for restoring ecosystems. I also introduced my students to recycling processes with Mary Mattingly at Socrates and how to identify native plants through conversation with curators and gallery directors. We studied ancient ways of living on earth that predate industrialized technology employed by global indigenous communities. We also met local Native American designers Korina Emmerich and Liana Sheway to see what contemporary creators are doing in building community. I also conducted studio visits with seven tutorial graduate students with seven studio visits. And I participated in mid semester reviews of student work with professors and students.

November 2020, September-December 2021: Yale University, Core Critic: Conducted studio visits with graduate painting students and participated in pit crits. Anoka Faruqee is creating a new method of pit crits where the group starts in somatic response allowing student feedback with breaks to mingle and reuniting to interpret seven aspects of inquiry methodology. I also worked intensively with four painting graduate students where we would do studio visits individually, conduct group critique, museum visits and general excursions. One of the most important values I wanted to impart on my grads is how to build a community of respect amongst your cohorts inspired by a diverse conversation. I wanted to push them to not self-categorize their work but to see it’s connections and expansive nature. My responsibilities also included advising students, participating mid semester reviews and committee input.

Fall 2020, University of Tennessee Knoxville: Collaborative Artists in Residence Heidi Howard and Esteban Cabeza de Baca

Heidi Howard and I collaboratively taught an undergraduate advanced drawing course and a grad seminar class in addition to studio visits and mentorship. We sought to demonstrate the importance of community and our conviction that ideas do not happen on an individual basis. In the drawing course, we deconstructed traditional approaches to drawings—drawing as a mapping strategy—and focused instead on drawing installation. For example, when I taught at UT Knoxville, I brought linguist and Cherokee finger weaver Candessa Tehee to discuss preserving and expanding traditions of weaving with students. She explored the way color, dress and performance are used in her community. Connecting students to local Native American communities helps establish land sovereignty, but I introduce students to craft strategies that break down traditional gendered divisions in the history of painting; I teach traditional craft techniques on the same level as “fine art”. We worked on liberating color to more organic mediums. We brought in Cherokee artist Yatika Star Fields to discuss how murals can tell a different story of survivance in the context of public engagement and we did mural projects with the students around campus. Heidi and I also directed painting projects devoted to portraiture in our advanced painting course. In our graduate seminar, we explored feminist ecological theories to reimagine history, art and politics through course reading, class discussion and through writing assignments.

Spring 2019, Columbia University: Graduate committee service

I served on the admissions committee both reviewing applications and interviewing applicants to the school of visual arts graduate school. I learned how to carefully review applicants when they are nervous and ask reassuring focused questions on concept with process. The more experienced faculty demonstrated to me how to build a diverse cohort of graduate painting students in the most expansive sense. What I learned throughout this process is looking at a portfolio and the applicant together anticipating how a life nurtures their future as an artist. Another component is evaluating progress in a program like Columbia that is interdisciplinary but with a strong focus in the New York school of painting.

Spring 2013-2014, Columbia University: Teaching Assistant for Patricia Treib, Painting 1; Teaching Assistant for Diana Cooper, Drawing 1

Patricia Treib taught students basic painting techniques using concise color palettes. I assisted her in introducing students oil paint mixing using color theory, working from images of old masters painting and multiple observational techniques. My painting class was inspired by a Wittgenstein prompt; I had students paint from a model in a low-lit studio to test perception and color mixing in a low contrast situation. I also served as a teaching assistant for Diana Cooper. In that course, drawing wove together traditional approaches and installation. I assisted Diana Cooper in teaching the basics of drawing but also non-traditional expansion of the medium. Diana had students explore text’s role in drawing and installation. We used text as prompts for surrealist collage and stream of conscious provocations along the walls of the classroom.

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