<p>I am a rising senior who is interested in visual art and a mix of traditional academic subjects. I do very well academically, and my dream would be to go to a top liberal arts school and major in art. I am specifically interested in realist/representational drawing and painting, and so have been searching online for college art professors who do this type of work. Unfortunately, most college art professors have abstract/conceptual backgrounds. Out of all the schools I have looked at, I have found only three with realist art professors: Swarthmore (professor Randall Exon), Bowdoin (professors Thomas Cornell and James Mullen), and American (professor Tim Doud).
Here are websites with some of their work, so you can get an idea of what I’m looking for:
[James</a> Mullen (Bowdoin, Visual Arts)](<a href=“http://www.bowdoin.edu/visual-arts/faculty-gallery/james-mullen/index.shtml]James”>http://www.bowdoin.edu/visual-arts/faculty-gallery/james-mullen/index.shtml)
[Studio</a> Art | Faculty Gallery | College of Arts and Sciences, American University, Washington, DC](<a href=“http://www.american.edu/cas/studio/faculty/faculty-gallery.cfm]Studio”>http://www.american.edu/cas/studio/faculty/faculty-gallery.cfm)
[Department</a> of Art, Swarthmore College - Randall Exon](<a href=“Art and Art History :: Swarthmore College”>Art and Art History :: Swarthmore College)</p>
<p>Is anyone out there in this same position? Do you know of any other liberal arts schools with strong (or even mediocre) representational/realist art programs? I am feeling a bit discouraged right now, and would appreciate any advice you have to offer!!</p>
<p>walkerita, I’d suggest that you look at the following schools for a combination of strong art studio department and strong academics.
Williams, Wesleyan, Hamilton, Skidmore, Kenyon, Conn College. Smith if you are female.</p>
<p>I don’t think it’s necessary that the professor/instructor and you share the same style. You’re there to learn from them, not copy them. Their objective would be to encourage and channel your creativity and if that leads you down a representative vs abstract path then it’s not likely that you would be re-routed.</p>
<p>Rather than focusing on the instructors’ own work I would suggest that you investigate the classes that are taught and the teaching style. By definition small liberal arts colleges have limited range in number of faculty and number of classes offered and consequently not all art departments are created equal. Also, some focus more on theory and some on practice. </p>
<p>My son is a graduate of Williams with a degree in art studio and art history. Both are well funded popular departments. The studio facilities are superb and the faculty’s expertise covers a wide range of technical knowhow, with an emphasis on process. His artwork would be considered representational and he never experienced any pushback on his choice of subject matter. In fact, even professors whose personal styles were abstract or political insisted on strong fundamentals.</p>
Walkerita, your post is near identical to what my daughter is looking for. Where did you end up going? Were you happy? If you were giving advice to someone with your profile, what would you suggest? We are finding it challenging to figure out which schools would be easy to combine art with (for example) bio or engineering, and it’s very tough to tell how supportive they are of representational art.
@shoot4moon we know someone whose D attended this institution in NYC:
Grand Central Academy of Art and the Water Street Atelier, New York, NY
The founder is an artist named Jacob Collins and I’ll bet he can tell you which LAC’s have art faculty in the realist style. I couldn’t find a website on the school but did find this:
http://grandcentralatelier.org/jacob-collins.php
Good luck!
walkerita, I believe that it is very important that the instructor (s) are great realistic painters themselves. If they are not, they won’t be able to teach you how to become one yourself, as they won’t have the necessary skills.
Grand Central Academy of Art in NYC and Jacob Collins are great. The best known ateliers (school for realistic art) are the Florence Academy and Angel Academy of Art, both in Florence, Italy. My daughter studied at both. She is a full-time successful professional realistic painter. She highly recommends the Florence Academy of Art, but knows Jacob Collins well–she sought him out for advice about 12 years ago.
A list of good realistic painting schools can be found on this website. Some of them are colleges, but most are not. Grand Central is on this list as well:
http://artrenewal.org/pages/ateliers.php
What a small, small world. Our daughter’s cousin just got 2nd place in Grand Central’s sculpture competition, and we are so impressed with what we see and what we have seen that we are considering investing in a workshop next summer. IT would involve flying across the country from CA for an art class, but I think it is extremely interesting. Thank you so much for the recommendation of artrenewal too - I will investigate that!!!