Painting & Printmaking :: Painting
The Painting program is an integral part of the Painting and Printmaking emphasis. The Painting area provides an environment that encourages students to develop as professional artists. The area attempts to offer a solid foundation in perceptual and technical skills, and an awareness of historical and contemporary precedent in the disciplines of painting and drawing. The emphasis encourages students to use these basic principles creatively to explore a broad range of concepts and to develop independent directions. The primary focus of the Painting program is two-dimensional imaging through the traditional mediums of painting and drawing. As the student advances, attention is paid to the integration of these two with the other 2-D disciplines of printmaking and photography, and further integration with three-dimensional concerns where appropriate.
| Undergraduate Program | Graduate Program |
| Area Facilities | Faculty Bios |
| Student Gallery | Faculty Gallery |
Undergraduate Program
At the undergraduate level this is realized first by giving the student a strong foundation in perceptual skills and awareness of historical and contemporary precedence. Secondly, it is realized by introducing a variety of concepts that challenge the student to use the basic skills to explore a broad range of artistic issues, and finally, by encouraging the student to pursue a more independent direction in his/her own work. Within this framework, the emphasis also fosters broad experimentation and supports work in cross-disciplinary, collaborative, and new genres of artistic practice. This program is intended to lay the foundation for an individual’s development as a professional artist, and also to prepare the student for further study at the graduate level. The undergraduate facilities include three large painting studios and one large drawing studio for life drawing classes. All of the studios provide excellent lighting and ventilation.
Strengths of the program include a well-qualified faculty who bring to the students a wide spectrum of viewpoints. The faculty is professionally active with strong exhibition records. San Diego’s close proximity to Los Angeles allows students to view major contemporary and historical exhibitions on an ongoing basis. The faculty actively encourages students to attend significant exhibitions in the Southern California region. Students have the opportunity to curate and exhibit in a professional setting on campus. Students also actively exhibit in numerous alternative spaces in the region.
Recent graduates from the Painting discipline have been accepted into the following prestigious MFA programs: Yale University, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Rhode Island School of Design, California College of Arts and Crafts, San Francisco Art Institute, Art Center College of Design, The School of the Visual Arts, New York University, Pratt Institute, Tyler School of Art, Claremont Graduate University, University of California at San Diego, and California Institute of the Arts.
Click here for the Painting and Printmaking Undergraduate Checklist (requires Adobe Acrobat Reader)
Graduate Program
The graduate program in Painting includes a 30 unit MA and a 60 unit MFA. Both programs demand complete dedication from the student, a high-level work ethic, and a willingness and ability to engage in discourse about contemporary culture, art, and theory. The graduate program, like the undergraduate, encourages broad experimentation and supports work in cross-disciplinary, collaborative, and new genres of artistic practice. The emphasis provides individual studios for graduate students. The student is expected to work independently with faculty and participate in periodic formal critiques with area faculty and invited guest faculty. There is a formal review of a student’s work after the completion of 21 units for the MA candidate and 30 for the MFA candidate, for advancement to candidacy. A thesis exhibition, paper and oral defense are required of all students for completion of the MA and MFA degrees (please see graduate bulletin for complete program requirements). Qualified students are eligible to apply for out of state tuition waivers, and graduate teaching associate positions.
A Visiting Artist Program brings contemporary artists into the school each year to interact with our students and faculty enhances the program. Visiting critics, artists, and curators have included: Dave Hickey, Nancy Chunn, John Baldessari, Terry and Jo Harvey Allan, Llyn Foulkes, Kim McConnel, Andrea Zittel, Robert Irwin, Karen Finley, Vito Acconci, and Jean Lowe.
The area offers opportunities for financial assistance yearly through the award of three annual scholarships: The Darryl Groover Memorial Scholarship, The Paul Lingren Scholarship, and The Frances Ellsworth Scholarship.
Click here for more information on SDSU Studio Art Graduate Programs.
Area Facilites
The undergraduate painting studios are located on the fifth floor of the art building. There are three studios that are used exclusively for painting classes and a fourth that is used for Life Drawing and Life Painting classes. These studios are large and can accommodate classes of up to 25 students. They all have natural north light as well as track lighting, and all provide excellent ventilation. The Painting graduate studios are housed in a room in the Old Art building, just across the courtyard from the undergraduate studios. The room is configured to provide six separate studio spaces, is private, and conducive to intense individual research.
Faculty Bios
Richard Baker
Richard Baker received a BFA degree from the Kansas City Art Institute and a MFA degree from the University of Cincinnati. He has exhibited extensively in this country, in Chicago, Denver, San Francisco, Tucson, and in Los Angeles at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery, Los Angeles Institute of Contemporary Art, Cirrus Gallery, Artspace, Fine Arts Gallery, UC Irvine, and Fisher Gallery, USC. He has also exhibited in Hakone and Tokyo, Japan, Venice, Italy and Berlin, Germany. Mr. Baker's work is included in permanent collections at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, California Center for the Arts, Esconcico, CA, Tokyo Central Art Museum, as well as numerous private collections. He has received critical reviews of his work in publications including Art News, Images and Issues, LAICA Journal, ArtWeek, Los Angeles Times, and Japan Times. He has been a member of the stable of artists at Cirrus Gallery in Los Angeles since 1981.
Janet L. Cooling
After earning a BFA degree from Pratt Institute in Brooklyn New York and a MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, Cooling went on to exhibit at the Canis Gallery in the Women’s Building in Los Angeles and at the Nancy Lurie Gallery in Chicago.
In 1984 Cooling’s work was included in the Venice Biennale, selected by Marcia Tucker who was then the head of The New Museum of Contemporary Art. The drawings and paintings have been exhibited in solo exhibitions throughout the U.S., as well as in dozens of group exhibitions including some of the following:” Extended Sensibilities, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, curated by Dan Cameron; “Young Americans, Allen Memorial Art Museum, Oberlin College, curated by William Olander;“Janet Cooling Retrospective, Paintings and Drawings, Beacon Street Gallery, Chicago, Illinois; “Painting and Sculpture Today, Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis, Indiana; “Artists to Artists: A Decade of The Space Program, Ace Gallery, New York, NY; “A Good Impression: A Century of Printmaking in San Diego”, San Diego Museum of Art, San Diego, CA; “Picturing The Modern Amazon”, The New Museum of Contemporary Art, New York, NY.The work has been written about extensively for over 25 years.
Gail Roberts
Roberts' work has been exhibited at the Madison Art Center, Fresno Metropolitan Museum, California Center for the Arts Museum, and Los Angeles Municipal Art Gallery. Her work has been critically reviewed in publications including Art in America and the New Art Examiner and she received numerous awards including a California Arts Council Fellowship. Recently, she was commissioned by the Port of San Diego to complete a 13' x 25' multi-paneled painting entitled Tree Lines located at the San Diego International Airport. She received her MA at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque.
For the past fourteen years, the conditions which continue to alter the landscape in Southern California have inspired her work Art critic Robert Pincus writes" She is exhorting us to see nature as a luminous mirror of our ceaseless obsession with mortality. The trees, streams and plants she renders exist near her house in Valley Center, a town in the rural northern reaches of San Diego County. Seeing nature wax and wane around her, she has become acutely aware of the fragility of life. Landscapes are radiant texts, if you take the time to learn how to read them. The notion is Emersonian or, if we look to the parallel in 19th-century American painting, Luminist. Roberts has become a vital artist in this tradition".