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Perspective Drawing: Private and Group Classes Taught by Professional Artists

Perspective Drawing classes in Miami, Florida

Perspective Drawing: Private and Group Classes Taught by Professional Artists

Perspective drawing is one of the most important skills for anyone who wants to create convincing images of buildings, interiors, streets, landscapes, objects, or imagined environments. It helps artists understand how space, distance, proportion, and depth can be represented on a flat surface.

Private and group perspective drawing classes taught by professional artists provide students with practical instruction and guided exercises. These classes can be adapted for beginners, teenagers, adults, art students, architects, designers, illustrators, and practicing artists who want to strengthen their drawing skills.

What Is Perspective Drawing Classes?

Perspective is a system used to represent three-dimensional space on a two-dimensional surface. It explains why objects appear smaller as they move farther away and why parallel lines seem to meet in the distance.

Artists use perspective to create a believable sense of:

  • Depth
  • Distance
  • Scale
  • Proportion
  • Spatial relationships
  • Volume
  • Architectural structure

Perspective is not limited to highly realistic art. It is also useful in illustration, animation, comics, abstract art, set design, sculpture, and conceptual drawing.

Why Learn Perspective?

Many students can draw individual objects but struggle when placing them inside a room, landscape, or architectural setting. Perspective helps organize those objects within a consistent space.

By studying perspective, students learn how to:

  • Draw rooms and interiors accurately
  • Create believable streets and cityscapes
  • Position objects at different distances
  • Understand the relationship between the viewer and the subject
  • Draw buildings from different angles
  • Create depth in landscapes
  • Construct imagined environments
  • Improve proportion and spatial awareness

Perspective also helps students understand how visual space is organized in paintings, photographs, films, and architectural images.

Private Perspective Drawing Classes

Private lessons provide individualized instruction based on the student’s experience, interests, and professional goals.

A beginner may need to understand the horizon line and vanishing points, while a more advanced student may want to study complex interiors, curved forms, aerial perspective, or architectural drawing.

Private classes are especially useful for:

  • Beginners who prefer personal guidance
  • Art students preparing portfolios
  • Architects and interior designers
  • Illustrators and comic artists
  • Students interested in urban sketching
  • Artists working with landscapes or interiors
  • Adults returning to drawing
  • Students who need flexible scheduling

The instructor can identify specific problems and develop exercises focused on those areas. Because the lesson is personalized, students can progress at a pace that feels comfortable and productive.

Group Perspective Drawing Classes

Group classes offer a collaborative environment where students can learn through demonstrations, shared exercises, and constructive discussion.

The instructor may introduce a perspective system and then guide the class through drawing a room, street, building, still life, or imaginary scene. Students can compare different solutions and learn from the way others interpret the same assignment.

Group classes are ideal for:

  • Friends or family members learning together
  • Teenagers interested in art and design
  • Community art groups
  • Beginners seeking an affordable introduction
  • Students who enjoy social learning
  • Artists interested in regular practice
  • Schools and cultural organizations

Although everyone may work from the same lesson, professional instructors can provide individual feedback and adapt exercises for different skill levels.

One-Point Perspective

One-point perspective is often the first system students learn. It is used when the front of an object faces the viewer directly and lines moving into the distance converge toward a single vanishing point.

Common examples include:

  • A hallway
  • A road viewed from the center
  • A room seen from the front
  • Railroad tracks
  • A row of buildings
  • A table positioned directly in front of the viewer

Students usually begin by identifying the horizon line and placing one vanishing point. They then learn how to construct boxes, furniture, doors, windows, and architectural elements within the same space.

One-point perspective provides a strong introduction to depth and spatial organization.

Two-Point Perspective

Two-point perspective is used when the viewer sees the corner of an object rather than its front surface.

The horizontal edges of the object move toward two separate vanishing points. This system is commonly used to draw:

  • Buildings seen from a corner
  • Furniture at an angle
  • City blocks
  • Boxes and geometric objects
  • Interior spaces
  • Architectural exteriors

Two-point perspective creates a more dynamic view and helps students understand how forms rotate in space.

Three-Point Perspective

Three-point perspective adds a third vanishing point above or below the horizon line. It is often used when looking dramatically upward or downward.

Examples include:

  • Looking up at a skyscraper
  • Viewing a city from a high building
  • Dramatic architectural illustrations
  • Comic-book environments
  • Fantasy cities
  • Aerial views

This system can create a powerful sense of height, scale, and movement. It is generally introduced after students understand one- and two-point perspective.

The Horizon Line and Eye Level

The horizon line represents the viewer’s eye level. Its placement affects how objects are seen.

When an object is below the horizon line, the viewer can usually see its top. When it is above the horizon line, the viewer may see its underside.

Understanding eye level helps students control the visual experience of a scene. A low horizon line can make buildings appear monumental, while a high horizon line can create the impression of looking down over a space.

Vanishing Points

A vanishing point is the location where parallel lines appear to meet as they recede into the distance.

Vanishing points help artists maintain consistency. Without them, buildings, furniture, and other objects may appear distorted or disconnected from the surrounding space.

Students learn how to identify vanishing points in photographs and real environments. They also learn how to create their own spatial systems when drawing from imagination.

Drawing Basic Forms in Perspective

Before attempting complicated buildings or interiors, students often practice drawing simple geometric forms, including:

  • Cubes
  • Rectangular boxes
  • Cylinders
  • Spheres
  • Pyramids
  • Cones

These forms become the foundation for more complex subjects. A building can begin as a box, a column as a cylinder, and a roof as a triangular form.

Professional artists teach students how to simplify complicated structures before adding windows, textures, decorations, or other details.

Circles, Cylinders, and Curved Forms

Drawing circles in perspective can be challenging because a circle often appears as an ellipse when viewed at an angle.

Students may practice drawing:

  • Wheels
  • Cups
  • Columns
  • Arches
  • Domes
  • Tables
  • Bottles
  • Round buildings

Understanding ellipses is especially important for industrial design, product drawing, architecture, and still-life art.

Measuring Proportion and Scale

Perspective drawing also involves comparing the size and position of objects.

Students learn how to:

  • Repeat objects at equal distances
  • Draw windows of consistent size
  • Place people correctly within architectural scenes
  • Create floor tiles
  • Measure building levels
  • Establish believable scale relationships
  • Reduce objects gradually as they recede

These skills help prevent figures, furniture, and architectural elements from appearing too large or too small.

Drawing Interiors

Interior perspective is useful for artists, architects, interior designers, and students interested in spatial design.

Classes may include exercises involving:

  • Bedrooms
  • Living rooms
  • Galleries
  • Restaurants
  • Studios
  • Offices
  • Museums
  • Theaters

Students learn how to place walls, doors, windows, furniture, artwork, and lighting within a coherent space.

They may also study how composition and viewpoint influence the mood of an interior.

Architectural and Urban Drawing

Perspective is essential for drawing buildings and city environments.

Students may work from:

  • Photographs
  • Architectural references
  • Direct observation
  • Outdoor urban-sketching sessions
  • Historical buildings
  • Modern architecture
  • Imagined cities

They learn how to simplify complex structures, establish major angles, and add details without losing the overall spatial organization.

Urban drawing can also teach students how people, vehicles, signs, trees, and street furniture interact within public space.

Perspective in Landscape Drawing

Perspective is not limited to architecture. It also helps create depth in natural environments.

Students learn how distant objects change in:

  • Size
  • Detail
  • Contrast
  • Color
  • Sharpness
  • Texture

A tree in the foreground may appear large and detailed, while distant trees become smaller and less defined.

This gradual change creates the illusion of space and distance.

Aerial or Atmospheric Perspective

Aerial perspective describes how the atmosphere affects the appearance of distant objects.

As objects move farther away, they often appear:

  • Lighter
  • Less detailed
  • Lower in contrast
  • Softer around the edges
  • Closer in color to the sky or atmosphere

Artists use atmospheric perspective to create depth in landscapes, cityscapes, and large interior spaces.

It can be combined with linear perspective to produce a more convincing image.

Perspective from Observation

Students may practice drawing directly from real environments rather than relying only on diagrams.

Possible locations include:

  • A classroom
  • A studio
  • A hallway
  • A park
  • A street
  • A museum
  • A public plaza
  • A café

Drawing from observation helps students recognize perspective systems in everyday life. It also teaches them how to simplify what they see and make decisions about composition.

Perspective from Imagination

Once students understand the basic rules, they can use perspective to invent spaces that do not exist.

This is especially useful for:

  • Concept art
  • Animation
  • Video-game design
  • Comics
  • Film storyboards
  • Fantasy illustration
  • Science-fiction environments
  • Set design

Students learn how to create a believable world by maintaining consistent scale, viewpoint, lighting, and spatial relationships.

Materials Used in Perspective Drawing Classes

Students may use:

  • Graphite pencils
  • Mechanical pencils
  • Charcoal
  • Ink
  • Rulers
  • T-squares
  • Set squares
  • Perspective grids
  • Erasers
  • Sketchbooks
  • Drawing paper
  • Digital tablets

Beginners can start with simple pencils, paper, and a ruler. More advanced students may work freehand or use digital drawing programs.

The instructor can recommend materials according to the student’s goals and budget.

Freehand Perspective

Although rulers are helpful for learning the basic system, artists also benefit from practicing freehand perspective.

Freehand drawing allows students to work more quickly and naturally. It is especially valuable for urban sketching, travel drawing, and conceptual studies.

The goal is not always mathematical perfection. A drawing can remain expressive while still communicating believable space.

Professional artists help students find a balance between accuracy and spontaneity.

Why Study with a Professional Artist?

A practicing artist can explain perspective as both a technical system and a creative tool.

Professional artists understand that a perfectly constructed drawing is not necessarily an interesting artwork. They can teach students how to use viewpoint, scale, distortion, and composition to create atmosphere and meaning.

An artist-instructor can also demonstrate how perspective is used differently in:

  • Fine art
  • Architecture
  • Illustration
  • Animation
  • Painting
  • Comics
  • Sculpture
  • Installation art
  • Film and theater design

This broader perspective helps students understand how technical knowledge supports personal expression.

Perspective and Personal Style

Learning the rules of perspective does not require artists to create only realistic drawings.

Many artists intentionally alter or reject traditional perspective to create emotional, symbolic, or abstract spaces. However, understanding the system allows them to make those choices deliberately.

Students can use perspective to create:

  • Realistic environments
  • Distorted interiors
  • Dreamlike spaces
  • Surreal architecture
  • Abstract geometric compositions
  • Multiple viewpoints
  • Symbolic landscapes

Technical knowledge gives artists more freedom because they can decide when to follow the rules and when to transform them.

Benefits Beyond Art

Perspective drawing also develops useful cognitive and practical abilities, including:

  • Spatial reasoning
  • Problem-solving
  • Observation
  • Patience
  • Concentration
  • Visual organization
  • Hand-eye coordination
  • Design awareness
  • Planning skills

These abilities can be valuable in architecture, engineering, interior design, fashion, product design, animation, and many other fields.

Choosing the Right Class

Before enrolling, students should consider their goals and preferred learning environment.

Private classes are often best for students who need individualized instruction, flexible scheduling, portfolio preparation, or help with a specific problem.

Group classes may be better for students who enjoy collaboration, shared assignments, demonstrations, and creative community.

Useful questions to ask include:

  • Is the class suitable for beginners?
  • Does it cover one-, two-, and three-point perspective?
  • Is the focus architectural, artistic, or both?
  • Are outdoor drawing sessions included?
  • Does the instructor teach freehand perspective?
  • Are materials provided?
  • Is individual feedback included?
  • Can lessons be adapted for portfolio development?
  • Are online classes available?
  • Does the instructor have experience as a professional artist?

A strong course should combine clear technical instruction with creativity, experimentation, and personal support.

Conclusion

Private and group perspective drawing classes provide students with the knowledge needed to create convincing spaces, structures, and environments.

Through the study of horizon lines, vanishing points, proportion, scale, geometric forms, and atmospheric depth, students gain greater control over their drawings. Under the guidance of professional artists, perspective becomes more than a set of rules. It becomes a creative language for organizing space and directing the viewer’s experience.

Whether the goal is to draw architecture, improve a portfolio, explore urban sketching, design imaginary worlds, or simply gain confidence, perspective classes offer a practical and rewarding foundation for artistic growth.

PDX CONTEMPORARY ART

Hamish Fulton
Hamish Fulton

PDX CONTEMPORARY ART: Sustaining Artists, Ideas, and Place

Since opening in Portland in 1996, PDX CONTEMPORARY ART has cultivated an artist-centered program grounded in long-term relationships, rigorous exhibitions, and sustained support for creative careers. Representing artists from the Pacific Northwest alongside national and international voices, the gallery creates productive encounters among distinct generations, geographies, materials, and artistic languages.

Its history is closely connected to architecture and place. The gallery’s earlier spaces were designed by Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works, while its current home occupies a revitalized Quonset hut within a developing creative community in Portland’s industrial northwest district. This setting reflects the gallery’s broader character: adaptable, materially conscious, and committed to dialogue between contemporary art and the cultural environment that surrounds it.

PDX CONTEMPORARY ART approaches the gallery not simply as a commercial venue, but as an evolving platform for experimentation, continuity, and public engagement. Its program encompasses painting, sculpture, photography, textiles, installation, and conceptually driven practices without imposing a single aesthetic identity. What unites these positions is a belief in the artist’s capacity to reshape perception. Through attentive representation and consistently ambitious exhibitions, the gallery has become an important structure of support within Portland’s contemporary art community—and a meaningful point of connection between regional practices and the wider art world.

History
Opened in 1996 in a beautiful small space, designed by Brad Cloepfil of Allied Works who also designed the larger space opened in 2006, PDX CONTEMPORARY ART continues to be an artist-centric gallery which continues to expand and evolve, mounting shows each month while maintaining its mission of facilitating and building artists’ careers. PDX is known for consistently programming compelling exhibitions, to be supportive of the community, and representing artists both local and international. Our newest space is in a revitalized quonset hut and part of a Skylab project to develop a creative community on the edge of industrial northwest Portland.

Staff
Jane Beebe, Owner and Director
JM Fields, Gallery Manager
Nathan Anderson, Gallery Preparator and Archivist for estate of D.E.May
Sam Beebe, Gallery Associate
Keegan Rankin, Agaric, Developer

PDX CONTEMPORARY ART Pdxcontemporaryart.com
1881 NW Vaughn Street, Portland, OR 97209
+1-503-222-0063
[email protected]

Open 10 AM – 5 PM, Tuesday – Saturday

Current
Mixed Flock: 30 Years
Alma Allen, Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Nick Blosser, Iván Carmona, Marjorie Dial, Amjad Faur, Bean Finneran, Jacques Flechemuller, Ellen George, Victoria Haven, Elizabeth Knight, Justin L’Amie, James Lavadour, Terran Last Gun, Nathan William Lambdin, Nancy Lorenz, D.E. May, Kristen Miller, Wes Mills, Jeffry Mitchell, Megan Murphy, Jenene Nagy, Ido Radon, Georgina Reskala, Joe Rudko, Tad Savinar, Susan Seubert, Adam Sorensen, Barbara Stafford, Storm Tharp, Gus Van Sant, Nell Warren, Heather Watkins, Marie Watt, Yamamoto Masao
July 1 – August 29, 2026
Upcoming
Past
Mixed Flock: 30 Years
Alma Allen, Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Nick Blosser, Iván Carmona, Marjorie Dial, Amjad Faur, Bean Finneran, Jacques Flechemuller, Ellen George, Victoria Haven, Elizabeth Knight, Justin L’Amie, James Lavadour, Terran Last Gun, Nathan William Lambdin, Nancy Lorenz, D.E. May, Kristen Miller, Wes Mills, Jeffry Mitchell, Megan Murphy, Jenene Nagy, Ido Radon, Georgina Reskala, Joe Rudko, Tad Savinar, Susan Seubert, Adam Sorensen, Barbara Stafford, Storm Tharp, Gus Van Sant, Nell Warren, Heather Watkins, Marie Watt, Yamamoto Masao
July 1 – August 29, 2026
seeds petals stones
Ellen George
June 3 – 27, 2026
when once our shadows touched, moving gently on this wide path
Jenene Nagy
April 28 – May 23, 2026
Inhabitations
Nathan William Lambdin
April 1 – 25, 2026
2025: A Logbook Through Darkness
Tad Savinar
March 4 – 28, 2026
Notes, Notes, Notes
D.E. May
February 4 – 28, 2026
Drift Fence
Wes Mills
December 31, 2025 – January 31, 2026
Give a Girl a Dog
Elizabeth Knight
December 31, 2025 – January 31, 2026
Winter Blooming
Jeffry Mitchell
December 3 – 27, 2025
Day and Night
Kristen Miller
November 5 – 29, 2025
Visual Fields
Heather Watkins
October 8 – November 1, 2025
Dismal Nitch Polyphemus Moth
Justin L’Amie
September 10 – October 4, 2025
Bookends
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Iván Carmona, Jodie Cavalier, Nan Curtis, Marjorie Dial, Jess Perlitz, Joshua West Smith
September 10 – October 4, 2025
Summer Group Show 2025
Christian Abusaid, Nick Blosser, Iván Carmona, Heloise De Mil, Marjorie Dial, Bean Finneran, Ellen George, Johannes Girardoni, Shanti Grandhi, Victoria Haven, Justin L’Amie, Yamamoto Masao, D.E. May, Kristen Miller, Jeffry Mitchell, Jenene Nagy, Joe Rudko, Tad Savinar, Susan Seubert, Adam Sorensen, Barbara Stafford, Storm Tharp, Nell Warren, Heather Watkins, Marie Watt
July 2 – August 23, 2025
Art for a new consciousness
Christian Abusaid
June 4 – 28, 2025
HOME GROUND
James Lavadour
May 1 – 31, 2025
From the Stacks
April 2 – 26, 2025
Fragile Beauty
Susan Seubert
March 5 – 29, 2025
COMPANY
Storm Tharp
February 5 – March 1, 2025
VERS
Storm Tharp
February 5 – March 1, 2025
Lines of Light
Nancy Lorenz
January 2 – February 1, 2025
Trozos
Iván Carmona
December 4 – 28, 2024
When you are gone
Marjorie Dial
October 30 – November 30, 2024
Near and Far Afield
Nick Blosser
October 2 – 26, 2024
(in)finite
Johannes Girardoni
August 28 – September 28, 2024
Properties of Layers
Bean Finneran
August 28 – September 28, 2024
Summer Ritual
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Nick Blosser, Iván Carmona, Marjorie Dial, Amjad Faur, Anna Fidler, Bean Finneran, Jacques Flechemuller, Ellen George, Victoria Haven, Elizabeth Knight, Justin L’Amie, James Lavadour, Nancy Lorenz, D.E. May, Kristen Miller, Wes Mills, Jeffry Mitchell, Jenene Nagy, Georgina Reskala, Franklin Russell, Tad Savinar, Storm Tharp, Nell Warren, Heather Watkins, Marie Watt, Adrian Ruth Williams, Yamamoto Masao, Yuyang Zhang
July 3 – August 24, 2024
Living in a City
Justin L’Amie
June 5 – 29, 2024
Arches (and apertures)
Terry Toedtemeier
May 1 – June 1, 2024
Nancy Lorenz: Drawings
Nancy Lorenz
May 1 – June 1, 2024
Animal Spirit
Yamamoto Masao
April 3 – 27, 2024
Work After Work: PDX Staff Show
James Allen, Nathan Anderson, Lydia Beebe, Sam Beebe, Graham Bell, Iván Carmona, Janetmarie Fields, Jill Guild, Jon Hart, Justin L’Amie, Rose McCormick, Caitlin Moore, Jordan Pieper, Crystal Query, Adam Sorensen, Naomi Rosen
March 6 – 30, 2024
Scrapbook
Joe Rudko
February 1 – March 2, 2024
Out of Salem: D.E. May & Friends
Craig Klyver, Anonymous Out of Salem: D.E. May & Friends, Bryan Null, Dan Schmidt, Terry Schneider, Monte Shelton, John Van Dreal, Natalie (Laswell) Hargreaves, Bonnie Hull
January 3 – 27, 2024
Elefant Medium
Jeffry Mitchell
December 1 – 30, 2023
Planet Waves
James Lavadour
November 1 – 28, 2023
Elemental Things
Heather Watkins
November 1 – 28, 2023
A Spell for Letting Go
Amjad Faur
October 4 – 28, 2023
Volver a ver / To see again
Georgina Reskala
August 30 – September 30, 2023
You belong among the wildflowers
Barbara Stafford, Ellen George, Adam Sorensen, Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Georgina Reskala, Victoria Haven, Marjorie Dial, Yamamoto Masao, Patrick Abbey, Iván Carmona, Bean Finneran, Susan Seubert, Molly Vidor, Tina Beebe, Justin L’Amie, Jeffry Mitchell, Larry Yes, Nancy Lorenz, Andy Stout, Kristen Miller, Joe Rudko, Terry Toedtemeier, D.E. May, Amjad Faur, Nick Blosser, Mike Vos
July 8 – August 26, 2023
Ether
Megan Murphy
May 31 – July 1, 2023
the silent twig
Wes Mills
May 31 – July 1, 2023
Slow Gestures
Ellen George
May 3 – 27, 2023
Lost and Found
Tina Beebe
April 5 – 29, 2023
Ephemeros
Nell Warren
April 5 – 29, 2023
FROM THE ARCHIVES: NOTES AND PLANS
D.E. May
March 1 – April 1, 2023
a river with no banks
Jenene Nagy
March 1 – April 1, 2023
M U S I N G S FROM THE FUTURE
Tad Savinar
January 11 – February 25, 2023
Looking Back, Looking Forward
Kristen Miller
December 7, 2022 – January 7, 2023
A Shared Horizon (Western Door)
Marie Watt
November 3 – December 3, 2022
sandwiches for every meal
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen
October 5 – 29, 2022
Water Color
Adam Sorensen
September 1 – October 1, 2022
Easy Breezy
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Bean Finneran, Barbara Stafford, Ellen George, Georgina Reskala, Heather Watkins, Iván Carmona, Jeffry Mitchell, Jenene Nagy, Jacques Flechemuller, Joe Rudko, Justin L’Amie, Kristen Miller, Marjorie Dial, Nancy Lorenz, Nell Warren, Storm Tharp, Terry Toedtemeier, Victoria Haven, Wes Mills, Jodie Cavalier
August 2 – 27, 2022
The Repository
Marjorie Dial
July 2 – 30, 2022
The Queens of Rain
Victoria Haven
July 2 – 30, 2022
In This Garden
Storm Tharp
May 22 – June 30, 2022
Calling Invisible Doctors
James Lavadour, Terry Toedtemeier
April 22 – May 20, 2022
New Work From Our Artists’ Studios
Adam Sorensen, Victoria Haven, Joe Rudko, Ellen George, Nick Blosser, Jeffry Mitchell, Kristen Miller
March 1 – 26, 2022
D.E. May Archiving Project
January 11 – February 19, 2022
I Have a Winter Friend
Jeffry Mitchell
November 16 – December 24, 2021
tierra de GIGANTES
Iván Carmona
October 13 – November 13, 2021
still—moving
Heather Watkins
September 1 – October 9, 2021
Walking
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Nick Blosser, Iván Carmona, Amjad Faur, Jacques Flechemuller, Ellen George, Victoria Haven, Elizabeth Knight, Justin L’Amie, James Lavadour, Nancy Lorenz, D.E. May, Kristen Miller, Wes Mills, Jeffry Mitchell, Megan Murphy, Jenene Nagy, Georgina Reskala, Tad Savinar, Adam Sorensen, Barbara Stafford, Storm Tharp, Terry Toedtemeier, Molly Vidor, Nell Warren, Heather Watkins, Marie Watt, Bob Schalkwijk, Richard Long, Christopher Baird, Alfredo Jaar, Hamish Fulton, Sam Magavern
July 1 – August 28, 2021
The Color of Breathlessness
Tina Beebe, Iván Carmona, Bean Finneran, Ellen George, Johannes Girardoni, D.E. May, Kristen Miller, Wes Mills, Adam Sorensen, Barbara Stafford, Storm Tharp
June 2 – 26, 2021
Inventing the Truth
Georgina Reskala
May 5 – 29, 2021
Support System
Joe Rudko
March 31 – May 1, 2021
BONSAI
Yamamoto Masao
March 3 – 27, 2021
D.E. MAY, MEGAN MURPHY, & JENENE NAGY
D.E. May, Megan Murphy, Jenene Nagy
February 3 – 27, 2021
Incarnate
Megan Murphy
January 6 – February 2, 2021
Ferocious Mothers
Natalie Ball, Jessica Jackson-Hutchins, Ellen Lesperance, Maya Lin, Heather Watkins, Marie Watt, Senga Nengudi
December 2, 2020 – January 2, 2021
Shadow, Hold Your Breath
Justin L’Amie
November 4 – 28, 2020
EXPECTING RAIN
James Lavadour
September 30 – October 31, 2020
Seeking Fragrance
Storm Tharp
September 2 – 26, 2020
River
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Sam Beebe, Nick Blosser, Iván Carmona, Ellen George, Peter Gronquist, Elizabeth Knight, Justin L’Amie, D.E. May, Kristen Miller, Jeffry Mitchell, Jenene Nagy, Georgina Reskala, Joe Rudko, Adam Sorensen, Andy Stout, Terry Toedtemeier, Molly Vidor, Nell Warren, Heather Watkins, Yamamoto Masao
July 2 – August 29, 2020
PIVOT: Drawings
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Victoria Haven, D.E. May, Nancy Lorenz, Marie Watt, Kristen Miller
May 30 – June 30, 2020
Fresh New Work from Our Artists’ Studios
James Lavadour, Ellen George, Justin L’Amie, Jenene Nagy, Iván Carmona, Amjad Faur, Nick Blosser, Kristen Miller
April 22 – June 30, 2020
Falling Green
Barbara Stafford
March 4 – May 2, 2020
Skeleton
Adam Sorensen
January 15 – February 29, 2020
SUBLIME
Iván Carmona
December 4 – 28, 2019
A pop-up sale of work by Jeffry Mitchell at Oxbow !
Jeffry Mitchell
November 21 – 24, 2019
Works on Paper
Nancy Lorenz
November 5 – 30, 2019
box breathing
Jenene Nagy
October 2 – November 2, 2019
Brighten and Fade
Kristen Miller
September 4 – 28, 2019
IT’S SUMMER !
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Natalie Ball, Tina Beebe, Nick Blosser, Iván Carmona, Jacques Flechemuller, Amjad Faur, Bean Finneran, Ellen George, Peter Gronquist, Victoria Haven, Elizabeth Knight, James Lavadour, Nancy Lorenz, Jeffry Mitchell, Megan Murphy, Jenene Nagy, Georgina Reskala, Joe Rudko, Tad Savinar, Adam Sorensen, Barbara Stafford, Andy Stout, Storm Tharp, Molly Vidor, Nell Warren, Heather Watkins, Justin L’Amie
July 2 – August 31, 2019
Dan May: Artworks by D.E. May
D.E. May
June 5 – 29, 2019
I begin with a thin line
Ellen George
April 30 – June 1, 2019
Speculative Frictions
Caspar Heinemann, Emily Jones, Ranu Mukherjee, 0rphan Drift, Ido Radon, Stephanie Simek
April 3 – 27, 2019
It’s Not Any House You Know: New Myths for a Changing Planet
Jacques Flechemuller
March 6 – 30, 2019
Imprint of Place
Liz Robb, Iván Carmona
February 6 – March 2, 2019
drawings
Wes Mills
January 2 – February 2, 2019
The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new lands but seeing with new eyes
Molly Vidor
December 4 – 28, 2018
Tyger! Tyger!
Jeffry Mitchell
October 30 – December 1, 2018
All that I can see from here
James Lavadour
October 3 – 27, 2018
Encounters
Storm Tharp, Adam Sorensen, Yamamoto Masao, Jeffry Mitchell, Nancy Lorenz, Tsubasa Kato, Nao Osada, Itsuki Kaito, Masumi Kawamura, Masashi Echigo, MAYRHOFER-OHATA
August 28 – September 29, 2018
Along the Edge
Amjad Faur, Ellen George, Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Victoria Haven, Elizabeth Knight, James Lavadour, Nancy Lorenz, Kristen Miller, Jenene Nagy, Georgina Reskala, Joe Rudko, Barbara Stafford, Tad Savinar, Terry Toedtemeier, Nell Warren, Heather Watkins, Justin L’Amie, D.E. May, Allynn Carpenter, Scotty Craighead, William Burton Binnie, Andy Stout, Jack Ryan, Agnes Martin, Tina Beebe, David Shratter, Nick Blosser
July 3 – August 25, 2018
The Book is a Body that Bends
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen
June 6 – 30, 2018
Waiting Room
Heather Watkins
May 2 – June 2, 2018
Intermediate Techniques of Photography
Joe Rudko
April 4 – 28, 2018
Ma’at Mons
Storm Tharp
February 28 – March 31, 2018
Midnight Florist
Justin L’Amie
January 31 – February 24, 2018
Residue of a Vision
Georgina Reskala
January 3 – 27, 2018
Adam Sorensen: Places
Adam Sorensen
December 6 – 23, 2017
Bean Finneran: Sushi Platforms
Bean Finneran
December 6 – 23, 2017
Susan Spence: Beach Baskets
Susan Spence
December 6 – 23, 2017
Exteriors
Nick Blosser
October 4 – 28, 2017
Companion Species
Marie Watt
August 31 – September 30, 2017
PDX -> PDT
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Amjad Faur, Bean Finneran, Ellen George, Johannes Girardoni, Elizabeth Knight, James Lavadour, D.E. May, Kristen Miller, Wes Mills, Megan Murphy, Rankin Renwick, Tad Savinar, Adam Sorensen, Barbara Stafford, Storm Tharp, Terry Toedtemeier, Gus Van Sant, Molly Vidor, Nell Warren, Marie Watt, Yamamoto Masao
July 7 – 29, 2017
Dislocation
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Amjad Faur, Jacques Flechemuller, Ellen George, Nancy Lorenz, D.E. May, Wes Mills, Jenene Nagy, Rankin Renwick, Joe Rudko, Storm Tharp, Terry Toedtemeier, Adam Sorensen, Heather Watkins, Monica Angle, Avantika Bawa, Ron Linn, Rachel McKenna, Georgina Reskala, Andy Stout
July 5 – August 26, 2017
Tori
Yamamoto Masao
May 30 – July 1, 2017
Drinking Light
Barbara Stafford
May 2 – 27, 2017
A Scythe Across the Night Sky
Amjad Faur
April 4 – 29, 2017
Orbits
Bean Finneran
March 1 – April 1, 2017
Resonance
Johannes Girardoni
February 1 – 25, 2017
The House Inside/Desert Dreamin’
Elizabeth Knight, Liz Robb
January 3 – 28, 2017
Love is a Pink Cake
Jacques Flechemuller, Justin L’Amie, Jeffry Mitchell, Storm Tharp
November 29 – December 30, 2016
But That Was Then
November 1 – 26, 2016
Ledger of Days
James Lavadour
October 4 – 29, 2016
Pilgrim
Megan Murphy
August 30 – October 1, 2016
Darkness and Light
Kristen Miller
August 2 – 27, 2016
A Stand of Pine in a Tilled Field: 21 Years at PDX
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Tina Beebe, Nick Blosser, Brad Cloepfil, Bean Finneran, Jacques Flechemuller, Ellen George, Victoria Haven, Arnold J. Kemp, Justin L’Amie, James Lavadour, Susie J. Lee + Joe Freeman, Nancy Lorenz, D.E. May, Kristen Miller, Wes Mills, Jeffry Mitchell, Megan Murphy, Jenene Nagy, Rankin Renwick, Ethan Rose, Joe Rudko, Tad Savinar, Adam Sorensen, Barbara Stafford, Storm Tharp, Terry Toedtemeier, Molly Vidor, Nell Warren, Heather Watkins, Marie Watt, Yamamoto Masao
July 5 – 30, 2016
Album
Joe Rudko
May 31 – July 2, 2016
May
Ellen George
May 3 – 28, 2016
I want to do to you what spring does with the cherry trees
April 5 – 30, 2016
Mass
Jenene Nagy
March 1 – April 2, 2016
Night & Day
Jeffry Mitchell
January 12 – February 27, 2016
Color
Tina Beebe, Peter Gronquist, Joe Rudko, Storm Tharp, Molly Vidor
December 2, 2015 – January 9, 2016
NO SPECIFIC REGION
D.E. May
November 3 – 28, 2015
New Paintings
Adam Sorensen
September 29 – October 31, 2015
This Is The Only One
Heather Watkins
September 1 – 26, 2015
Superstition
Justin L’Amie
August 4 – 29, 2015
Let’s Get Lost
Marie Watt, Tad Savinar, James Lavadour, D.E. May, Jacques Flechemuller, Ellen George, Elizabeth Knight, Jenene Nagy, Joshua West Smith, Joe Rudko, Kristen Miller, Johannes Girardoni, Liz Robb, Elizabeth Mead, Anne Crumpacker, Barbara Stafford, Tina Beebe, Jane Timken, Nick Blosser, Wes Mills, Megan Murphy, Jeffry Mitchell, Nell Warren, Nancy Lorenz, Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Adam Sorensen, Terry Toedtemeier, Bean Finneran, Yamamoto Masao
June 30 – August 1, 2015
Entwined: a sound installation
Ethan Rose
June 2 – 27, 2015
WITH/AND: MFA in Craft Thesis Exhibition
May 15 – 27, 2015
Saltzman Road
Andy Stout
May 5 – 12, 2015
Polished Ground
Nancy Lorenz
March 31 – May 2, 2015
Battle
March 3 – 28, 2015
Picturesque
Joe Rudko
February 3 – 28, 2015
Subtitles
Victoria Haven
January 6 – 31, 2015
You Don’t Know Me
Susie J. Lee, Marne Lucas, Corey Lunn, Norah Horwitz
December 2 – 27, 2014
Sun Kings
Amjad Faur
November 4 – 29, 2014
Tiger
Storm Tharp
September 30 – November 1, 2014
brilliant
Jenene Nagy
September 2 – 27, 2014
Fingering Instabilities
James Lavadour
August 5 – 30, 2014
MOUNTAIN
Amjad Faur, Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen, Ragnar Kjartansson, Justin L’Amie, Megan Murphy, Alice O’Malley, Matthieu Ricard, Liz Robb, Adam Sorensen, Barbara Stafford, Terry Toedtemeier, Heather Watkins, Leigh Wells, Yamamoto Masao
July 1 – August 2, 2014
Manifest
Nell Warren
June 3 – 28, 2014
Redacted
Johannes Girardoni
April 29 – May 31, 2014
No Show
Amjad Faur, Ellen George, Storm Tharp, Terry Toedtemeier, Molly Vidor, Yamamoto Masao
April 15 – 26, 2014
Hamilton Drawings
Wes Mills
March 4 – April 12, 2014
Skies
Terry Toedtemeier
February 4 – March 1, 2014
I Never Complained About the Past: New Work / New Year
Tina Beebe, Nick Blosser, Elizabeth Knight, Jenene Nagy, Storm Tharp, Jane Timken, Joe Rudko
December 31, 2013 – February 1, 2014
WOODS
December 3 – 28, 2013
A Series of Rectangles
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen
November 5 – 30, 2013
I wonder
Tad Savinar
November 5 – 30, 2013
DANCE WITH INGRES.
Jacques Flechemuller
October 1 – November 2, 2013
Memory of Line: Grids, Templates and Miniatures
D.E. May
September 3 – 28, 2013
Passing Through
Kristen Miller
July 30 – August 31, 2013
The Trunk of a Tree
Justin L’Amie
July 2 – 27, 2013
Range
Victoria Haven, James Lavadour, Wes Mills, Megan Murphy, Jane Timken, Johannes Girardoni, Leigh Wells
June 4 – 29, 2013
Elsewhere
April 30 – June 1, 2013
KAWA=FLOW/Eschaton/New Works
Yamamoto Masao, Amjad Faur, Evan La Londe
April 2 – 27, 2013
The Optimist
Adam Sorensen
March 5 – 30, 2013
WHEN WILL MY LOVE BE RIGHT
Arnold J. Kemp
January 22 – March 2, 2013
Crow’s Shadow Institute of the Arts Ford Family Foundation Golden Spot Awardee Print Exhibition
January 3 – 19, 2013
Black Dove/Sky Forms
Molly Vidor, Nell Warren
December 4 – 29, 2012
From Ash and Pearl
Nancy Lorenz
October 30 – December 1, 2012
Skywalker/Skyscraper
Marie Watt
October 2 – 27, 2012
Holding a Peach
Storm Tharp
September 4 – 29, 2012
Movement of Objects at Rest
Heather Watkins
July 31 – September 1, 2012
Maybe it Takes a Loud Noise
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen
July 3 – 28, 2012
Measure
Jenene Nagy
June 5 – 30, 2012
Evening
Barbara Stafford
May 1 – June 2, 2012
Pastoral
Elizabeth Knight
April 3 – 28, 2012
Of Gardens
Tina Beebe
April 3 – 28, 2012
The Interior
James Lavadour
February 28 – March 31, 2012
Clouds Inclose Comets: The Envelope
Group Show
January 31 – February 25, 2012
Reflection
Ethan Rose
December 30, 2011 – January 28, 2012
Honeydrippers
Molly Vidor
November 29 – December 24, 2011
Sensing Place
Ellen George
November 1 – 26, 2011
to tease a hummingbird
Wes Mills
October 4 – 29, 2011
Memento
Kristen Miller
August 30 – October 1, 2011
NURSE
August 30 – October 1, 2011
Unfinished Business
Terry Toedtemeier
August 2 – 27, 2011
From the Stacks ’11
August 2 – 27, 2011
Silver & Stones
Nancy Lorenz
July 5 – 30, 2011
oomph [ʊmf]: enthusiasm, vigor, or energy. sex appeal
James Lavadour, Tad Savinar, Storm Tharp, Marie Watt, Arcy Douglass, Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen
May 31 – July 2, 2011
Light Matters
Johannes Girardoni
May 3 – 28, 2011
Bethlehem in Wax
Amjad Faur
April 5 – 30, 2011
New Work from “KAWA=FLOW”
Yamamoto Masao
April 5 – 30, 2011
Two Painters
Jane Timken, David Fertig
March 1 – April 2, 2011
Hit the North (45º 52’N)
Victoria Haven
January 18 – February 26, 2011
The Template Files
D.E. May
November 30, 2010 – January 15, 2011
as easy as falling off a log
Rankin Renwick
November 2 – 27, 2010
Natural Selection
Justin L’Amie
November 2 – 27, 2010
DAYDREAM NATION
Arnold J. Kemp
November 2 – 27, 2010
BEYOND THE FENCE
Jacques Flechemuller
October 5 – 30, 2010
New Westerns
Adam Sorensen
August 31 – October 2, 2010
RELATIVE PICNIC
August 3 – 28, 2010
The Classroom
Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen
June 29 – July 31, 2010
Hercules
Storm Tharp
June 1 – August 14, 2010
Cut-ups
Gus Van Sant
May 5 – 29, 2010
Geographies of the Same Stone: for TT
James Lavadour
March 30 – May 1, 2010
Marker
Marie Watt
March 2 – 27, 2010
Incidence and Pattern
Bean Finneran
February 2 – 28, 2010
Porcelain
Megan Murphy
January 5 – 30, 2010
Here and Gone
Kristen Miller
December 1, 2009 – January 2, 2010
“This Quiet Dust, Ladies and Gentlemen”
Arnold J. Kemp
November 2 – 28, 2009
MellowDrama by Joe Macca
Joe Macca
September 29 – October 31, 2009
Storied
Nell Warren
September 1 – 26, 2009
Trees
Terry Toedtemeier
August 4 – 29, 2009
Mondrian’s Forest
Wes Mills
June 30 – August 1, 2009
Black Page
D.E. May
June 2 – July 15, 2009
nose touches twig
Ellen George
April 29 – May 30, 2009
Afield
Tina Beebe
April 29 – May 30, 2009
Smile
March 31 – April 25, 2009
KAWA = FLOW
Yamamoto Masao
March 3 – 28, 2009
Songs from the Treetops, group show curated by Harrell Fletcher
February 2 – 28, 2009
Six Records of a Floating Life
Nancy Lorenz
December 30, 2008 – January 31, 2009
False Fjords
Adam Sorensen
December 2 – 27, 2008
ARM & ARM
Storm Tharp
November 1 – 29, 2008
READING ROOM
Nazraeli Press Books, Amjad Faur, Charles Rasmussen, Richard Ehrlich, Robert Adams
September 30 – October 30, 2008
Splitting the Difference
Victoria Haven
September 2 – 27, 2008
Not Just Another Pretty Picture
Tad Savinar
September 2 – 27, 2008
Off-Road
Nick Blosser
August 5 – 30, 2008
Animal History Boxes
Elizabeth Knight
August 5 – 30, 2008
Kinda Like a Buffet
Group Show
July 1 – August 2, 2008
Glass works
June 12 – 28, 2008
The Things of Light
Megan Murphy
June 3 – 28, 2008
Quandaries
Nell Warren
April 29 – May 31, 2008
Close to the Ground
James Lavadour
April 1 – 26, 2008
Nothing but the Truth
Jacques Flechemuller
March 4 – 29, 2008
DESTROYER
Molly Vidor
February 5 – March 1, 2008
slowblivion
Joe Macca
January 2 – February 2, 2008
Resonance
Richard Wilson
December 4 – 29, 2007
Origin
Ryan Jeffery
December 4 – 29, 2007
Along the Interface
Kristen Miller
October 30 – December 1, 2007
TESTBEDS
D.E. May
October 2 – 27, 2007
Yamamoto Masao
Yamamoto Masao
August 28 – September 29, 2007
true bearing
Megan Murphy, Nell Warren, Sam Beebe, Christophe Berhault, Justine Kurland, Raymond Meeks, Lucas Foglia, Harrell Fletcher
July 31 – August 25, 2007
Drawings
Wes Mills
July 3 – 28, 2007
DRAWING / MAKING – Projects of Allied Works Architecture, 1997 – 2007
Brad Cloepfil
June 5 – 30, 2007
Daughter
May 1 – June 2, 2007
Hawaii to the Owyhee: A Bird’s Eye View
Terry Toedtemeier
March 31 – April 28, 2007
Tread Lightly
Marie Watt
February 27 – March 31, 2007
Mixed Company
Mary Henry, Ryan Jeffery, D.E. May, Rankin Renwick
January 30 – February 24, 2007
We Appeal to Heaven
Storm Tharp
January 2 – 27, 2007
Paintings and Drawings
Megan Murphy
December 5 – 30, 2006
Double Vision
Nancy Lorenz
October 31 – December 2, 2006
Gone Fishing
Jacques Flechemuller
October 3 – 28, 2006
New Works
Brad Adkins
October 3 – 28, 2006
City In A Box
Tad Savinar
September 5 – 30, 2006
Sun Spots
James Lavadour
August 2 – September 2, 2006
Hand-woven Wool Baskets of the Plateau Tradition
Joey Lavadour
August 2 – September 2, 2006
Oxygen Paintings
Joe Macca
July 5 – 29, 2006
Speciation
Ellen George
May 30 – July 1, 2006
Akzidenz Grotesk – Light Oldstyle Figures
Patrick Abbey
May 2 – 27, 2006
Nazraeli Press Books
Nazraeli Press Books
May 2 – 27, 2006
Line = Form
Kevin Burrus
April 1 – 29, 2006
Shift
Bean Finneran
February 28 – April 1, 2006
Waiting
Kristen Miller
January 31 – February 25, 2006
The Lucky Ones
Victoria Haven
January 3 – 28, 2006
New Found Land
December 6 – 31, 2005
Next
November 1 – December 3, 2005
The Surroundings of the Archaic Character
Yamamoto Masao
October 4 – 29, 2005
New paintings
Nick Blosser
July 6 – August 13, 2005
Group Show
Brad Adkins, Nick Blosser, Jacques Flechemuller, Victoria Haven, Elizabeth Knight, Lisa Lockhart, Nancy Lorenz, Yamamoto Masao
May 31 – July 2, 2005
The Quiet
Barbara Stafford
May 3 – 28, 2005
Tutti Frutti
Jacques Flechemuller
April 5 – 30, 2005
The Black Show
Storm Tharp
March 8 – April 30, 2005
Walk
James Lavadour
March 8 – April 30, 2005
Spring Paintings
Tina Beebe
March 1 – April 2, 2005
Places, Pieces, and Hidden Histories
Terry Toedtemeier
January 25 – February 26, 2005
Toys and Totems
Elizabeth Knight
December 7 – 31, 2004
The Color of Underappreciated Things
Joe Macca
November 9 – December 4, 2004
Blanket Stories
Marie Watt
October 5 – November 6, 2004
Magnificent Obsessions
Lisa Lockhart
September 7 – October 2, 2004
Shock and Awe
Megan Murphy
August 10 – September 4, 2004
Nakazora
Yamamoto Masao
July 6 – August 7, 2004
Summer Group Show
June 8 – July 3, 2004
Wood
D.E. May
May 4 – June 5, 2004
Apparent Horizon
Victoria Haven
April 7 – May 1, 2004
Meadow
Ellen George
March 9 – April 3, 2004
Artifacts
Kevin Burrus
January 6 – February 9, 2004
Romantic Landscapes
James Lavadour
December 9, 2003 – January 3, 2004
Order in Space
Nancy Lorenz
November 11 – December 6, 2003
Geographies of the Same Stone
Terry Toedtemeier
October 7 – November 8, 2003
From Here and There
Nick Blosser
September 9 – October 4, 2003
Curves
Bean Finneran
July 8 – August 2, 2003
Night
Megan Murphy
March 11 – April 5, 2003
Night Paintings and I, Virus
Joe Macca
February 1 – March 8, 2003
Drawing
Storm Tharp
November 19 – December 14, 2002
Alloys and The Role of Water
D.E. May
October 22, 2002 – November 16, 2006
Intersections
James Lavadour
August 27 – September 21, 2002
Influenced
Kane Do, Jacques Flechemuller, Mary Henry, Elizabeth Knight, James Lavadour
June 4 – July 4, 2002
Arrangements
Ellen George
May 7 – June 13, 2002
Illuminations
Elizabeth Knight
April 9 – May 4, 2002
Landscape paintings
Nick Blosser
March 12 – April 6, 2002
Tetris Drawings and Other New Work
Victoria Haven
February 12 – March 9, 2002
Sleep and Sleeplessness
Marie Watt
January 8 – February 2, 2002
Mother of Pearl Paintings
Nancy Lorenz
December 5, 2001 – January 5, 2002
HEDZ
Joe Macca
November 6 – December 4, 2001

Invited artist

Natalie (Laswell) Hargreaves
0rphan Drift
Christian Abusaid
Robert Adams
Marcy Adzich
Ellen Agee
Alma Allen
James Allen
Nathan Anderson
Kenneth Andrew Mroczek
Monica Angle
Artocracy
Christopher Baird
Natalie Ball
Johanna Barron
Avantika Bawa
Travis Beardsley
Sam Beebe
Lydia Beebe
Silas Beebe
Marwin Begaye (Navajo/Diné)
Graham Bell
Greg Bell
Gretchen Bennett
Zack Bent
Martha Bergman
Christophe Berhault
Big Yard Foundation
William Burton Binnie
Philippe Blanc
Pat Boas
Reese Bowes
Chad Brown
Matt Bua
Wendy Burden
Karl Burkheimer
Ryan Burns
Caroline Burton
Allynn Carpenter
Jodie Cavalier
Raven Chacon (Diné)
Brad Cloepfil
Ashby Lee Collinson
Brennan Conaway
Scotty Craighead
Anne Crumpacker
Nan Curtis
Larry Cwik
Eugene Davis
Jovencio de la Paz
Heloise De Mil
Santiago de Paoli
Bill Dean
Jen Delos Reyes
Aruni Dharmakirthi
Brooks Dierdorff
Marc Dombrosky
Melia Donovan
Arcy Douglass
Madelynn Dubin
Masashi Echigo
Richard Ehrlich
Carson Ellis
Olivia Erlanger
Tia Factor
Leiv Fagereng
Daniel Fagereng
Eduardo Fernandez
David Fertig
Anna Fidler
Janetmarie Fields
Yatika Fields (Osage, Cherokee, Creek)
Harrell Fletcher
Lucas Foglia
Michelle Forsyth
Derek Franklin
Heather Frazier
Joe Freeman
Eugénie Frerichs
Sue Friesz
Hamish Fulton
Nicolo Gentile
Narangkar Glover
Shanti Grandhi
Peter Gronquist
Jill Guild
Erin Haldane
Megan Hanley
Jon Hart
Cameron Hawkey
Jesse Hayward
Caspar Heinemann
Jessica Hickey
Todd Hido
Midori Hirose
Jeri Hise
Norah Horwitz
Tula Howell
Laura Hughes
Bonnie Hull
Jay Humphreys
Scott Wayne Indiana
Philip Iosca
Tristan “TK” Irving
Carrie Iverson
Alfredo Jaar
Jo Jackson
Jessica Jackson-Hutchins
Jeff Jahn
Jessie Weitzel and Jeremy Le Grand
Chris Johanson
Vanessa Johnson
Rebecca Johnson
Brad Johnson
Emily Jones
Itsuki Kaito
Tsubasa Kato
Masumi Kawamura
Jeff Kellar
Heechan Kim
Lillian Kingery
Ragnar Kjartansson
Susan Klein
Craig Klyver
Bukola Koiki
Justine Kurland
Evan La Londe
Kendra Larson
Terran Last Gun
Joey Lavadour
Matthew Leavitt
Heather Lee Birdsong
Ellen Lesperance
Maya Lin
Ron Linn
Jim Lommasson
Richard Long
Marne Lucas
Corey Lunn
Sam Magavern
Brenda Mallory
John Mann
Isabelle Marshall
Agnes Martin
Montana Maurice
MAYRHOFER-OHATA
Jarrod McCann
Rose McCormick
Adam McIsaac
Rachel McKenna
Elizabeth Mead
Sorcha Meek
Dave Meeker
Raymond Meeks
Josh Meier
Tony Mendoza
James Miles
Greg Misarti
Caitlin Moore
Diego Morales-Portillo
Nicole Eva Mueller
Ranu Mukherjee
Greely Myatt
Emily Nachison
Nathan William Lambdin
Eduardo Navarro
David Neevel
Senga Nengudi
Tucker Nichols
TJ Norris
Bryan Null
John Alan Nyberg
Alice O’Malley
OCAC MFA in Craft
Geraldine Ondrizek
Lisa Onstad
Nate Orton
Nao Osada
Anonymous Out of Salem: D.E. May & Friends
Calder Paulsen
Bob Peirce
Kaj-anne Pepper
Jess Perlitz
Jordan Pieper
Crystal Query
Ido Radon
Charles Rasmussen
Shawn Records
Wendy Red Star
James Reed
Michael Reinsch
Ron Rezek
Matthieu Ricard
Bradley Rogers
Naomi Rosen
Ben Rosenberg
Molly Roth
Franklin Russell
Jack Ryan
Kaia Sand
Bob Schalkwijk
David Schell
Richard Schemmerer
Crystal Schenk
Jane Schiffhauer
Dan Schmidt
Terry Schneider
Mandee Schroer
Stacy Jo Scott
Blake Shell
Monte Shelton
David Shratter
Stephanie Simek
Lorna Simpson
Ben Skiba
Natasha Snellman
Madeleine Soich
Susan Spence
Anya Spielman
Andy Stout
Bradley Streeper
Jason Sturgill
Little Sun
Susie J. Lee + Joe Freeman
Seth Tane
Jenevive Tatiana
The Beebe Company
Molly Torgeson
Rob Tsunehiro
Jordan Tull
Von Tundra
John Van Dreal
Joey Veltkamp
Ros Vila
Dieta von Matthiessen
Mike Vos
Leigh Wells
Joshua West Smith
Adrian Ruth Williams
Janet Williamson
Richard Wilson
Ryan Wilson Paulsen
Christine Wong Yap
Melanie Yazzie (Navajo/Diné)
Larry Yes
Wesley Younie
Renée Zangara
Yuyang Zhang

Represented artists

Anna Gray + Ryan Wilson Paulsen
Nick Blosser
Iván Carmona
Marjorie Dial
Amjad Faur
Bean Finneran
Jacques Flechemuller
Ellen George
Johannes Girardoni
Victoria Haven
Elizabeth Knight
Justin L’Amie
James Lavadour
Susie J. Lee
Nancy Lorenz
Yamamoto Masao
D.E. May
Kristen Miller
Wes Mills
Jeffry Mitchell
Megan Murphy
Jenene Nagy
Georgina Reskala
Joe Rudko
Tad Savinar
Susan Seubert
Adam Sorensen
Barbara Stafford
Storm Tharp
Terry Toedtemeier
Gus Van Sant
Nell Warren
Heather Watkins
Marie Watt

Associate artist

Patrick Abbey
Tina Beebe
Nazraeli Press Books
Kane Do
Laure Heinz
Mary Henry
Arnold J. Kemp
Ryan Jeffery
Taimuras Kozirev
Lisa Lockhart
Daniel McCall
Rankin Renwick
Liz Robb
Ethan Rose
Jane Timken
Molly Vidor

DRAW Project

Anita MILOS TOMAIC

DRAW Project

DRAW Project: The Public Life of the Private Mark

Drawing begins before certainty. It occupies the unstable interval between thought and form, when an image has not yet become a finished object and an idea remains vulnerable to revision, hesitation, accident, and discovery. The DRAW Project, initiated by artist, maker, educator, and activist Tomas Vu, takes this provisional condition as both its subject and its curatorial method. Conceived as an invitation extended from artist to artist and from one artistic community to another, DRAW transforms the intimate gesture of making a mark into a sustained international conversation.

Bringing together private sketches and drawings by more than one hundred artists—and continuing to expand—the project offers access to material that often remains concealed inside sketchbooks, studios, folders, and working archives. These works were not necessarily conceived as autonomous exhibition objects or polished products for the market. Many belong to the uncertain beginning of something: an observation, a private notation, an unfinished proposition, a political reaction, a repeated form, or an image still searching for its final language.

DRAW does not treat incompletion as deficiency. It presents it as knowledge.

Drawing Before Resolution

Within conventional exhibition systems, the public typically encounters an artwork after a long process of selection and refinement. Experiments are removed, surfaces are resolved, and uncertainty disappears behind the authority of the finished object. DRAW reverses that hierarchy. It directs attention toward the moment before resolution, when the artist is still testing the limits of an idea.

The sketch is frequently described as preparatory, as though its value depended upon the painting, sculpture, film, or installation that might eventually emerge from it. Yet drawing possesses its own intellectual and emotional autonomy. A line can record movement, measure distance, outline a memory, invent a body, expose doubt, or visualize something that does not yet exist. It can operate simultaneously as image, language, evidence, plan, confession, and refusal.

By exhibiting drawings that retain the pressure of their making, DRAW allows viewers to encounter thought as an active process rather than as a completed conclusion. Erasures, corrections, repeated marks, empty spaces, and abrupt transitions become visible traces of decision. The viewer does not merely see what the artist decided; one also senses the alternatives that remained possible.

In this context, drawing becomes a record of consciousness in motion.

The Politics of the Immediate Mark

The urgency of drawing is inseparable from its accessibility. It requires relatively little infrastructure: a surface, a tool, a body, and an impulse to register experience. This material economy has made drawing an essential medium in moments of displacement, censorship, political crisis, social protest, and personal upheaval. A drawing can be produced quickly, transported discreetly, reproduced, circulated, or abandoned. Its apparent fragility can become a form of resistance.

DRAW emerged as a dialogue extending from the political anxieties of one national context toward those of others. Rather than proposing a unified global condition, the project recognizes that artists experience history from radically different positions. Political instability, migration, war, economic inequality, ecological crisis, racial violence, and restrictions on expression do not generate one universal visual language. They produce multiple, sometimes contradictory responses.

The exhibition’s international structure allows those responses to coexist without being reduced to a single narrative. The drawing becomes a point of contact: not proof that all experiences are equivalent, but evidence that the act of marking a surface can establish communication across geographical and ideological boundaries.

Since its early presentations in Beijing and Dali, the project has circulated through museums, universities, and cultural institutions in cities including Boston, Manila, Novi Sad, Split, Belgrade, Miami, Herzliya, Lowell, Santiago, and Yonkers. Each host location has introduced new artists, contexts, and interpretations, allowing DRAW to operate less like a fixed traveling exhibition than an evolving cultural organism.

From Private Space to Public Encounter

DRAW is built upon a productive contradiction. It seeks authenticity in material originating from private spaces, yet the act of exhibiting that material inevitably changes its meaning. A page removed from a sketchbook is no longer entirely private once it enters a gallery. A spontaneous notation becomes framed by curatorial selection, institutional architecture, and public attention.

The project does not eliminate this tension; it makes the tension visible.

To describe a drawing as “unfiltered” does not mean that it exists outside culture or interpretation. Even the most immediate mark emerges from memory, training, desire, fear, habit, and historical circumstance. What DRAW reveals is not an untouched interior self, but the complex threshold where private thought becomes a communicable form.

The visitor is therefore placed in an unusual ethical position. Looking at these works can feel like entering an artist’s studio without encountering the artist’s protective explanations. The drawings may expose uncertainty, repetition, obsession, humor, vulnerability, or contradiction. They offer proximity without complete access. The inner life of another person remains partially unknowable, even when its traces are placed before us.

That distance is important. DRAW does not ask the viewer to decode each work as a transparent psychological document. Instead, it presents drawing as a site where interior experience touches the external world without becoming fully surrendered to it.

An Exhibition That Continually Rewrites Itself

The project’s structure begins with invitation rather than institutional authority. Tomas Vu’s initial gesture—reaching outward toward peers—established a model based on artistic relationships, collaboration, and exchange. Each new presentation can connect one community to another, expanding the exhibition through the social networks that sustain artistic production.

The participating roster crosses generations, geographic regions, disciplinary backgrounds, and levels of public recognition. It includes artists whose practices are closely identified with drawing alongside others better known for painting, sculpture, performance, film, installation, design, or social practice. This plurality resists the idea that drawing is a specialized or isolated discipline. Instead, drawing appears as a foundational mode of thinking that moves through nearly every form of visual culture.

The project is therefore not simply an accumulation of works on paper. It is an archive of relationships. Each contribution points not only toward an individual practice but also toward the invitation that made its presence possible. The exhibition grows through acts of trust: an artist agrees to release something private, a collaborator helps translate the project into a new setting, and a host institution creates conditions for another public encounter.

DRAW’s search for new collaborators and hosts is not a logistical detail added after the curatorial concept. It is central to the work. The project remains unfinished because its meaning depends upon continued movement.

Drawing as Duration

A finished artwork can create the illusion that it arrived all at once. Drawing often refuses that illusion. A densely worked page records accumulation; a rapid line preserves speed; an erased section makes revision visible. Even a nearly empty sheet carries duration through the distance between one mark and another.

Within DRAW, time is not represented only through imagery. It is embedded in the physical behavior of the line. Some drawings appear immediate, produced in a compressed encounter between hand and surface. Others reveal sustained repetition, obsessive attention, or a return to the same image over an extended period. Together they produce a temporal field in which beginnings, interruptions, memories, and unrealized futures remain present.

This is one reason drawing is particularly capable of addressing the contemporary moment. The present is never fully stable or complete. It is experienced through fragments of information, emotional reactions, political uncertainty, interrupted attention, and rapidly changing conditions. Drawing can absorb this instability because it does not require the world to become coherent before responding to it.

Its incompleteness is not an escape from reality. It is a form adequate to reality’s unfinished state.

The First Mark as a Collective Proposition

DRAW ultimately proposes that the beginning of an artwork deserves the same sustained attention often reserved for its conclusion. The first mark contains risk because it commits an internal impulse to an external surface. It separates before from after. Yet it also opens a field of possibilities whose outcome remains unknown.

By assembling these beginnings, the project constructs a collective portrait that refuses to become a single image. The works differ in scale, intention, material, and cultural origin, but they share the condition of drawing as an encounter between thought and matter. Each line is singular; together, they form a network.

DRAW is therefore both intimate and expansive. It enters the private territory of artistic process while building an international platform for exchange. It preserves vulnerability while placing it in public circulation. It acknowledges the ephemerality of paper, gesture, and thought while demonstrating their capacity to travel across institutions, languages, and political borders.

The project does not ask drawing to provide a definitive account of the contemporary world. It asks something more urgent: that drawing remain open enough to register the world while it is still changing.

In DRAW, the unfinished work is not waiting to become meaningful. Its openness is precisely where meaning begins.

PARTICIPATING ARTISTS

Adam Amara
Adrian Rhodes
Aga Ousseinov
Ahmet Arslan
Albert Weaver
Alejandro Contreras
Aleksandra Popovic
Alex Kvares
Alex Sewell
Alexis Callender
Alfonso Fernandez
Alyssa Piro
Amanda Linhares
Ambreen Butt
Ana Albertina Delgado
Andrea Resner
Andy Van Dinh
Anita Milos Tomaic
Antoine Williams
Augusto Cabeza
Aurelien Couput
Bale Creek Allen
Barbara Klain
Bao Lin
Baris Göktürk
Barnaby Furnas
Beau Willimon
Beka Goedde
Ben Hagari
Ben Zawalich
Benjamin Urzua Castillo
Betsabee Romero
Bill Ociepka
Bill Tyers
Bogoljub Dokovic
Brian Novatny
Bruno Castro Santos
Bryan McGovern Wilson
Buckminster Fuller
Camila Estrella
Cara Lynch
Carlos Arias
Carlos Faz
Caroline Carlsmith
Carey Hulbert
Casey O’Dwyer
Catarina Coelho
Cate Holt
Cecily Brown
Cesar Osario
Chire Regans
Chris Jehly
Christy Titus
Claudio Bravo
Constanza Alarcon Tennen
Cecilia Vazquez
Chloe Crookall
Corey Riddell
Corinne Bernard
Cornelius Tulloch
Cristen Shea
Cristobal Leyht
Cy Morgan
Damien Stamer
Damir Sobota
Dan Kennedy
Dana Sherwood
Daniela Montecinos
Dante Migone-Ojeda
Darina Karpov
Dasha Shishkin
David Altmejd
David Phaneuf
Davor Dmitrovic
Dian Hosner
Deanna Lee
Deborah Davidson
Deborah Santoro
Delia Del Carril
Denise Manseau
Dennis Scholl
Dona Altemus
Donald Baechler
Dr Lakra
Dragana B Stevanovic
Duy Hoang
Edvin Dragicevic
Elaine Wood
Elizabeth Alexander
Ellen Wetmore
Emily Henretta
Emma Sulkowicz
Eric Ramos Guerrero
Ernesto Caivano
Ernesto Oroza
Esteban Cabeza de Baca
Eugenio Darnet
Eva Petric
Fab Five Freddy
Farah Mohammad
Felice Grodin
Felipe Mujica
Fernando Krahn
Frank Campion
Frank Gehry
Fred HC Liang
Gandalf Gavan
Ghada Amer/Reza Farkondeh
Glenn Szegedy
Gonzalo Fuenmayor
Gonzalo Vargas
Goran Juresa
Greg Kessler
Gregory Amenoff
Gretchen Scharnagl
Guillermo Deisler
Guillermo Nunez
Gwen Strahle
Hanna Melnyczuk
Hanneline Rogeberg
Heather Gordon
Hedya Klein
Heidi Howard
Heimo Wallner
Hugo Crossthwaite
Hugo Leonello Nunez
Hugo Rivera -Scott
Ian Gerson
Irene Rice Pereira
Ivan Forde
Ivan Prerad
Ivan Sukovic
Ivan Suletic
Ivan Svagusa
Ivana Carman
Ivana Pipal
James Gortner
James Lee
James Roberts
Jasper Johns
Jeff Perrott
Jeffrey Sippel
Jelena Bulajic
Jelena Djuric
Jelena Sredanovic
Jen Sturgill
Jennifer Nuss
Jennifer Printz
Jesse Weiss
Jessica Segall
Jessica Tawczynski
JJ Cromer
Joanna Cortez
Joaquin Reyes Urrutia
Johana Moscosco
John Bailly
John Guthrie
John Walker
Jonathan Adams
Jorge Pantoja
Jose Delgado Zuniga
Jose Luis Cuevas
Jose Mesias
Joshua Rondeau
Juan Hernandez Diaz
Juni Van Dyke
Kambui Olujimi
Kara Walker
Kat Chamberlin
Katarina Ivanisin Kardum
Kate Liebman
Katherine Blackburne
Kayla Mohammadi
Khaulah Naima Nruddin
Kiki Smith
Kreh Mellick
Kristin Plucar
Kristina Restovic
Krystal Hart
Kurt Kemp
Kyle Webster
Laleh Khorromian
Laura Watt
Lautaro Labbe
Leah Piepgras
Leandro Vazquez
Leigh Suggs
Leigh Ann Hallberg
LeRoy Neiman
Li Mu
Li Tainyuan
Lilo Salberg
Lin Jiang
Lisa Sigal
Linn Meyers
Liu Shangying
Loren Zivkovic Kuljis
Loriel Beltran
Lucy Kim
Luis Silva
Luisa Basnuevo
Ma Shuqing
Margaret Braun
Margaret Femia
Maria Mohor
Mario Ferretti
Mario Toral
Mark Iwinski
Mark Perlman
Mark Dion
Marko Markovic
Marko Tadic
Martin Daiber
Mary Hart
Matt Noonan
Megan Foster
Michael Lichtenstein
Michael S Vieira
Miguel Cardenas
Miki Lee
Miran Sabic
Miron Milic
Monika Sigeti
Motohiro Takeda
N3TO
Natalie Birinyi
Natasa Kokic
Nathan Catlin
Nebojsa Lazic
Nemanja Nikolic
Nemanja Radusinovic
Nicola Lopez
Nicole Kathleen Burko
Nicolas Mancini
Nikica Jurkovic
Nikola Markovic
Nikola Radosavljevic
Nils Karsten
Nina Ivanovic
Noah Loesberg
Nora Mesaros
Norman Paris
Olivia Stanislas
Onajide Shabaka
Oscar Tuazon
Pablo Cano
Pamela Wamala
Paul Bright
Paul Rho
Paul J Noel
Paula Wilson
Pauline Shaw
Patricia Fernandez
Patricia Vargas
Peter Wayne Lewis
Phong Bùi
Pia Bahamondes
Pilar Elgueta
Pouya Afshar
Predrag Dimitrijevic
Rafael Domenech
Rafael Villares
Riaki Enyama
Richard Ryan
Richard Tinkler
Rirkrit Tiravanija
Rob Moore
Rob Swainston/Zorowar Sidhu
Roberto Gomez
Rocio Olivares
Rodrigo Arteaga
Rodrigo Canala
Roger Tibbetts
Rose Seilian Theriault
Saint Clair Cemin
Sam Messer
Samnang Riebe
Sandra Allen
Sanford Biggers
Sarah Sze
Scott Hazard
Selva Aparicio
Shahar Yahalom
Shahzia Sikander
Shawna Moulton
Shirin Neshat
Simonetta Moro
Simonette Quamina
Sonja Gasperov
Stephen Mishol
Steve M Cozart
Stipan Tadic
Sun Xun
Susanna Koetter
Suzanne Herrera Li Puma
Tammy Nguyễn
Tan Ping
TARWUK
Ted Lavash
Teodora Rakidzic
Thomas Frontini
Thomas Ray Willis
Tijana Lukovic
Tim Murdoch
Tomas Vu
Tommy White
Travis Head
Trenton Doyle Hancock
Tuguldur Yondonjamts
Ursula Von Rydingsvard
Valentina Cruz
Valentina Soto Illanes
Valerie Hammond
Vedran Perkov
Vice Tomasovic
Victoria Ravelo
Vinko Baric
Virginia Cramer
Wang Hongjian
Wiki Pirela
william cordova
William Kentridge
Xu Bing
Xu Wang
Ximena Borquez
Yang Hongwei
Yasi Alipour
Yuan Shun
Yuan Ye
Yuan Yunsheng
Yuan Zuo
Yuko Udo
Yun-Fei Ji
Yu-Wen Wu
Zhiqian Wang

DRAW

DRAW Project

DRAW

Cercle Naval, Brest ⎹ La communauté de ceux qui n’ont rien en commun

3 Jul — 17 Oct 2026 du mar. au sam. de 13h à 18h

This exhibition has been put together by the team behind the DRAW Project, a joint artistic adventure originating in New York in the early 2010s. It was the initiative of the artist Tomas Vu. DRAW was conceived as an international platform dedicated to contemporary drawing and brings artists from different backgrounds together around one simple idea: using drawing as a place for meeting, exchanging and experimenting.

Since it was first created, DRAW has travelled all over the world, undergoing transformations at every port of call, in countries including the United States, Chile, the Philippines and China. Each exhibition brings together artists of different generations, cultures and practices, creating new conversations through drawing, which becomes more than a medium, but rather a common language, enabling very diverse sensibilities and experiences to talk to each other.

As the years have gone by, the project has grown into an international community of artists and partners, with this collaborative dimension at the heart of its identity. Each presentation is an opportunity for new encounters and fresh exchanges, ensuring that DRAW is a constantly evolving movement, jointly constructed through the people and places which host it. Now DRAW is passing through Brest and adding artists from our own region to the exhibition. A quarter of the hundred or so artists on show live or work in Brittany. At the centre of this new DRAW event, a special place is devoted to Tomas Vu, the inspiration behind the project, with an ‘exhibition in the exhibition’. Artist and curator Rafael Domenech also wanted to pay tribute to Anjela Duval (1905–1981), whose collection of writings was co-published by Passerelle… [lire plus]

Clara Agnus, Bale Creek Allen, Giorgia Alliata, Sadrie Alves, Virginie Barré, José Bedia, Manon Bejuit, Marion Bonjour, Cecily Brown, Ariel Cabrera, Corentin Canesson et Mélissandre Tarantola, Alix Cantelaube, Caroline Carlsmith, Ivana Carman, Nathan Catlin, Astrid de la Chapelle, Ben Clement, William Cordova, Alejandro Contreras, Aurelien Couput, Chloe Crookall, Gaetano Cunsolo, Isabelle D’Amico, Alex Declino, Charlotte Delval, Dana DeGiulio, Predrag Dimitrijevic, Dr Lakra, Serena Duran, Cristina Escobar, Sabrina Fanego, Nicolas Filloque, Francesco Finizio, Megan Foster, Isaac Gaborieau, Hilary Galbreaith, Camille Girard & Paul Brunet, Adler Guerrier, Baris Göktürk, Felice Grodin, Guerilla Girls, Eric Ramos Guerrero, Valeria Guillén, Orlando Hernandez, Sareh Imani, Margaux Janisset, Sonia Rosa Kahn, Jordan James Kaye,  William Kentridge, Hasabie Kidanu, Calvin Kim, Bodo Korsig, Rachel Marisa LaBine, Justine Lai, Lucile Lance, Nichole Masani Landfair, Nebojsa Lazic, Peter Wayne Lewis, Fred HC Liang, Yann L’Outsider, Nicola López, Dominic Mangila, Sergio Marrero González, Dayana Matasheva, Gordon Matta-Clark, Roxane Mbanga, Jonas Mekas, José Manuel MesÍas, Jon Millan, Amanda Millet-Sorsa, Beatriz Monteavaro, Johann C. Muñoz, LeRoy Neiman, Edson Niebla, Brian Novatny, Jennifer Nuss, Roberto Obregón (Carolina and Fernando Eseverri collection), Edison Peñafiel, Maya Perry, Eva Petrič, Guillaume Pinard, Aleksandra Popovic, Ridwana Rahman, Alexis Ralaivao, Harold Ramírez, Christine Rebet, Paul Rho, Corey Riddell, Maximiliano Rosiles, Emma Rostaing, Dieter Roth, David Ryan, Liz Schneider, Dennis Scholl, Emma Seferian, Jessica Segall, Jeffrey Sippel, Siyu Chen, Kiki Smith, Sarah Sze, Stipan Tadić, Motohiro Takeda, Rika Tanaka, Eva Taulois, Rirkrit Tiravanija, Christy Titus,Yann Toma, Anaïs Touchot, Alejandro Valencia, Marko Velk, Rafael Villares, Maria Von Mier, Tomas Vu, Kara Walker, Ming Wang, Xu Wang, Alun Williams, Beau Willimon, Tommy White, Thomas Ray Willis, Iris Wu, Gerta Xhaferaj, Sun Xun, Yun-Fei Ji, Charlotte Zinsser, Yuan Zuo

Based on a proposal by Rafael Domenech, Sonia Rosa Kahn, Loïc Le Gall, Alejandro Valencia
This exhibition is supported by 193 Gallery, Paris 

As a complement to the exhibition, excerpts from artists’ animated films will be shown on the City of Brest’s video screens from June 29 to August 30, 2026. Posters featuring the artists’ works will also be displayed on the city’s public information boards.

SaveArtSpace is proud to present The Extravagance of the Quotidian

SaveArtSpace is proud to present The Extravagance of the Quotidian

SaveArtSpace is proud to present The Extravagance of the Quotidian, a public art exhibition on bus shelter ad space in Miami, FL, opening July 31, 2026, curated by Hermes Berrío.

The Extravagance of the Quotidian selected artist is Alfredo Travieso.

What is the most extraordinary thing we walk past every day?

Not everything meaningful arrives with spectacle. Sometimes it’s already there; hanging from a clothesline, sitting on a sidewalk, glowing under fluorescent light at the corner store, carrying the marks of labor, routine, and survival.

The Extravagance of the Quotidian is an invitation to look closer at the everyday and recognize its weight, its beauty, and its contradictions. This open call seeks artists whose work transforms the familiar into something undeniable; where ordinary objects, domestic rituals, street corners, gestures, and fragments of daily life become containers for memory, identity, struggle, humor, and grace.

What we call ordinary is often where life reveals itself most honestly. In public space, these works become interruptions; small monuments to the lives we are living, even when no one is looking.

Opening July 31, 2026, SaveArtSpace will launch a public art installation for the selected artwork on bus shelter ad space in Miami, FL. The public art will be on view for at least four weeks. Bus shelter location announced on July 13, 2026.

Devora Perez: In the Space Between—Where Light Becomes Structure

Devora Perez

Devora Perez: In the Space Between—Where Light Becomes Structure

Devora Perez: In the Space Between
Opening: Saturday, July 18, 2026
Public hours: 1:00–9:00 p.m.
Opening reception: 6:00–9:00 p.m.
Venue: Pendentive Studio
Address: 7615 Biscayne Boulevard, Miami, FL 33138
Presented with: Kates-Ferri Projects

Miami-born artist Devora Perez transforms light from an instrument of visibility into a material presence in In the Space Between, a solo exhibition opening July 18, 2026, at Pendentive Studio in Miami. Presented in collaboration with New York–based Kates-Ferri Projects, the exhibition brings together luminous constructions that move fluidly among painting, sculpture, architecture, and installation.

At first encounter, Perez’s works appear restrained: maple structures, translucent sheets of colored acrylic, carefully measured angles, and geometries reduced to their essential components. Yet this apparent simplicity is deceptive. Once natural light enters the acrylic planes, the objects begin to exceed their physical limits. Color escapes the artwork, spreading across walls, floors, adjacent objects, and the bodies of passing viewers.

The work is no longer confined to what Perez has constructed. It also includes what cannot be permanently held: reflections, shadows, chromatic projections, atmospheric changes, and the viewer’s continuously shifting perception.

Between Painting and Sculpture

The title In the Space Between identifies the conceptual territory Perez has occupied throughout her practice. Her works are neither conventional paintings nor autonomous sculptures. They borrow from the language of painting through color, surface, composition, and geometric abstraction, while asserting the physical projection and spatial presence commonly associated with sculpture.

Perez’s official artist statement describes her practice as an exploration of abstraction, materiality, and perception that deliberately blurs the distinctions among painting, sculpture, and installation. Her two- and three-dimensional works challenge stable definitions of structure and utility by activating relationships among material, light, and space.

The colored acrylic can initially be read as a painted plane. Unlike pigment applied to canvas, however, its color is not completely attached to a solid surface. It is transmitted through light. The hue that appears inside the acrylic is only one part of the composition; another emerges as a projection outside it.

Painting therefore becomes environmental. Color is liberated from the wall and allowed to occupy the room.

Perez’s maple constructions reinforce this ambiguity. They can resemble frames, supports, fragments of architecture, or incomplete functional objects. Rather than merely holding the colored material, the wood establishes boundaries through which light can pass. It creates a disciplined structure for something inherently unstable.

Color Beyond the Object

One of the exhibition’s central propositions is that an artwork does not necessarily end at its visible edge.

The translucent acrylic planes absorb, filter, redirect, and release light into the surrounding environment. These projections are not incidental effects produced by the sculptures; they form an essential part of the work. Pendentive Studio describes Perez’s color-cast shadows as extensions of the objects themselves, allowing each construction to change as daylight shifts and viewers move around it.

This expanded understanding of color distinguishes Perez’s work from forms of abstraction in which the painted surface remains materially stable. Her color is conditional. It depends upon the hour, the architecture, the intensity and direction of illumination, and the position of the observer.

A red or yellow plane may appear visually concentrated within the acrylic at one moment and then disperse across the wall at another. Two colors may overlap in space and produce a third, temporary field. A shadow may soften, sharpen, lengthen, or disappear.

Perez does not entirely determine these transformations. She creates the conditions through which they can occur.

Authorship is consequently shared among artist, material, light, architecture, and viewer. The completed object becomes the beginning of an experience rather than its final form.

The Viewer as an Active Participant

Perez’s work requires movement. It cannot be fully understood from a single frontal position because each change in perspective reorganizes the relationship among transparency, opacity, reflection, color, and depth.

From one angle, an acrylic plane may appear intensely saturated. From another, it becomes almost transparent. A wooden structure that initially reads as flat may reveal its volume when approached from the side. The viewer’s body may interrupt a projection, temporarily entering the composition as a silhouette.

This does not make the work interactive in a technological sense. Its interaction is perceptual and embodied. The viewer completes the artwork by walking, pausing, looking again, and becoming conscious of how vision is constructed.

Perez shifts attention away from the idea of perception as passive reception. Seeing becomes an event shaped by location and duration. The work reveals that an object does not possess one immutable appearance; it continually emerges through its relationship with changing conditions.

Minimal Form, Complex Experience

The apparent minimalism of Perez’s sculptures intensifies rather than reduces their complexity. By limiting her materials and formal vocabulary, she directs attention toward subtle phenomena that might otherwise remain unnoticed.

The precision of the maple structures contrasts with the instability of projected light. Wood appears solid, warm, and architectonic. Acrylic is manufactured and sharply defined, yet visually permeable. The shadow is immaterial but occupies measurable space.

These oppositions—solid and transparent, permanent and temporary, constructed and atmospheric—give the works their conceptual tension.

Minimal form also slows the act of looking. Because the works do not depend on figurative narration or spectacular imagery, viewers must become attentive to gradual changes: a slight alteration in hue, the overlap of translucent surfaces, a shadow extending beyond the object, or daylight reshaping the entire composition.

What initially appears quiet gradually becomes expansive.

Architecture, Interior Space, and Miami Light

The presentation at Pendentive Studio is especially relevant to Perez’s investigation. Located in Miami’s MiMo District, Pendentive functions simultaneously as a contemporary art gallery and the working offices of Phoebe O’Neill Interiors. Its exhibitions are installed among furnishings and design elements, encouraging visitors to consider how artworks operate within inhabited environments rather than isolated white-cube conditions.

Within this setting, Perez’s sculptures engage directly with interior architecture. The walls become receiving surfaces for projected color. Windows and changing daylight influence the exhibition. Furniture and architectural details enter into temporary relationships with the works.

This encounter also challenges the assumption that art and interior design occupy separate cultural categories. Perez’s objects may respond elegantly to an architectural space, but they resist becoming merely decorative. They alter the room while simultaneously exposing how the room structures our experience of them.

Miami itself is deeply relevant to this visual language. Perez has spoken about the influence of South Florida’s natural and artificial light, urban architecture, and landscape on her practice. In a city where sunlight can be intense, reflective, and constantly altered by water, glass, concrete, vegetation, and atmospheric conditions, light is not an abstract subject. It is part of the region’s daily material reality.

A Practice of Resistance

Perez describes her work as a form of resistance against singular definitions and limitations. This resistance does not appear through overt declaration. It is embedded in the inability of the works to remain inside one category.

They resist being only paintings because they occupy physical space. They resist being only sculptures because their visual identities depend upon projected color. They resist complete material containment because their boundaries are continually extended by light. They also resist a single fixed interpretation because every viewing position produces a different encounter.

In this sense, the “space between” is not an empty interval separating established forms. It is a productive territory in which distinctions can be questioned and reorganized.

From Object to Event

Perez earned her BFA from New World School of the Arts in 2016 and her MFA from Florida International University in 2020. Her work has appeared in exhibitions at institutions and organizations including the Corcoran Museum, the Patricia & Phillip Frost Art Museum, Coral Springs Museum of Art, Oolite Arts, and the Cisneros Fontanals Art Foundation. She received the Frost Art Museum’s Betty Laird Perry Award in 2020.

In the Space Between builds upon this sustained investigation of abstraction and perception while giving particular emphasis to the temporal life of the artwork. Perez does not present sculpture as an inert object completed in the studio. Instead, she creates a structure that waits to be activated by its surroundings.

The exhibition asks viewers to consider whether color belongs to the object that filters it, the light that carries it, the wall that receives it, or the eye that perceives it. The answer remains intentionally unresolved.

What Perez ultimately constructs is not simply a collection of maple-and-acrylic forms. She constructs encounters: temporary alignments among body, architecture, atmosphere, and time.

Her works occupy the space between painting and sculpture, but also the space between what is physically present and what can only be experienced. In that interval, light becomes structure, color becomes environment, and perception becomes the true medium of the exhibition.

Frances Trombly: What Holds at Shoshana Wayne Gallery

Frances Trombly: What Holds
Frances Trombly: What Holds

Frances Trombly: What Holds—Weaving Tension, Labor, and the Material Memory of Painting

Frances Trombly’s Los Angeles exhibition What Holds explores weaving, labor, tension, textile history, and the material structures underlying painting.

Frances Trombly: What Holds
Shoshana Wayne Gallery
5247 W. Adams Boulevard, Los Angeles, California
May 30–July 18, 2026

At Shoshana Wayne Gallery in Los Angeles, Frances Trombly’s What Holds asks a deceptively simple question: What allows an artwork, an institution, a body, or a social structure to remain intact under pressure? Presented from May 30 through July 18, 2026, the exhibition marks the Miami-based artist’s return to the gallery following her 2016 solo presentation. It continues her sustained investigation of weaving, material labor, and the often-unseen systems that make visual experience possible.

Trombly’s work has long occupied an unstable territory among painting, sculpture, installation, and textile art. In a 2016 Los Angeles Times review, Leah Ollman called her works “confident trespassers”—an apt description of objects that cross disciplinary borders without seeking permission from the categories they disturb. In What Holds, however, this trespassing has become more structural and philosophically precise. Trombly is not merely combining artistic genres; she is exposing the physical and cultural assumptions that separate them.

Before the Image, There Is a Structure

Western painting is frequently discussed through images, gestures, colors, symbols, and narratives. Trombly redirects attention toward what usually remains beneath or behind those visible elements: the woven support, the frame, the tension of the fibers, and the labor necessary to construct a surface.

At the conceptual center of What Holds is the warp—the longitudinal system of threads held under tension during weaving. Without the warp, cloth cannot take form. It is both infrastructure and possibility: a system that determines alignment while remaining open to alteration.

Trombly brings this concealed framework forward. Threads hang openly rather than disappearing beneath a completed surface. Woven sections slip away from their frames. Fiber accumulates through layers, folds, knots, interruptions, and suspended lengths. Nothing appears entirely resolved or permanently secured.

By leaving these material conditions visible, Trombly interrupts the expectation that artistic labor should disappear into a polished object. The work refuses the illusion of effortless completion. Instead, it preserves duration, repetition, correction, physical strain, and decision-making as part of its meaning.

Process is not evidence left behind after the artwork has been completed. Process becomes the artwork’s primary language.

Painting Without the Stability of the Canvas

Many of Trombly’s structures evoke looms, stretcher bars, scaffolding, warping boards, and architectural frameworks. They point toward painting while withdrawing the conventional stability that painting traditionally promises.

A stretched canvas is normally expected to present a unified plane: tight, flat, contained, and ready to receive an image. Trombly dismantles this expectation. Her woven surfaces sag, extend, overlap, detach, or remain incomplete. Frames no longer function as neutral boundaries. They become active structures that carry, divide, suspend, and expose.

This approach returns painting to its material origins. Canvas is not simply a blank field; it is cloth held under tension. The apparently passive support is the product of fiber, pressure, preparation, physical knowledge, and time.

Trombly’s work therefore proposes that every image depends upon an infrastructure. Visibility is never autonomous. Something must hold the surface in place, just as unseen systems hold institutions, economies, communities, and cultural narratives together.

The title What Holds can consequently be understood as both a question and a condition. What structures endure? What becomes visible because something else remains concealed? What labor supports the appearance of coherence?

The Grid as Discipline and Accumulated Time

The grid has often been associated with modernist order, rationality, autonomy, and formal control. In Trombly’s practice, however, it is neither purely optical nor entirely abstract. The textile grid is produced bodily, thread by thread.

Every crossing registers an action. Every repeated movement accumulates time. The grid becomes a record of discipline rather than a symbol detached from human effort.

This distinction is essential. Trombly’s woven geometry may initially resemble the visual vocabulary of abstract painting, but its structure emerges from repetitive physical labor. What appears minimal is not necessarily effortless. Restraint may conceal exhaustion; precision may be the result of countless gestures.

The works thus challenge conventional hierarchies that historically elevated painting and sculpture while positioning weaving, embroidery, and other textile practices as decorative, domestic, functional, or secondary. Trombly does not simply demand that fiber be admitted into the category of fine art. She demonstrates that the supposedly autonomous history of painting has always depended upon textile knowledge.

Color as Material Event

Color in What Holds does not behave as an independent layer placed upon a neutral support. It travels through the support itself.

Dyed and painted threads form washes, bands, interruptions, and gradual transitions. Color appears to move across the works, but it also penetrates their physical construction. Rather than creating illusionistic depth, Trombly produces depth through accumulation: one textile plane before another, one thread crossing another, one duration remaining visible beside the next.

The results can recall Color Field painting, geometric abstraction, or modernist experiments with the picture plane. Yet Trombly refuses the fiction that color floats freely. Her color remains attached to fiber, gravity, weight, touch, and resistance.

A painted area can be interrupted by an exposed warp. A smooth chromatic passage can end in knots or hanging threads. A seemingly unified composition can reveal the instability of the structure supporting it.

These interruptions are not failures to complete the image. They are reminders that unity is constructed and provisional.

Labor Without Spectacle

Trombly’s work is visually quiet, but its quietness should not be mistaken for passivity. The exhibition resists spectacle because spectacle would conceal the forms of attention it seeks to recover.

Her materials demand slow observation. The viewer must notice slight differences in density, tension, spacing, weight, and surface. The works do not reveal themselves through a single dramatic encounter. They unfold through prolonged looking.

This temporal demand mirrors the time required to produce them. Hand weaving is accumulative: a structure grows through repetition rather than sudden transformation. Trombly translates that duration into an encounter between artwork and audience. Looking becomes another form of sustained labor.

The exhibition therefore offers an alternative to the accelerated circulation of contemporary images. It does not ask merely to be photographed, consumed, and replaced. It asks the viewer to remain with the work long enough to perceive how it has been built.

Structures Under Pressure

In What Holds, tension is both a technical necessity and a social metaphor. Textile production depends upon calibrated pressure. Too little tension and the structure loses coherence; too much and the threads risk distortion or rupture.

Trombly does not resolve this tension. She allows it to remain visible.

Her works suggest that endurance is not the same as stability. A system can continue functioning while showing strain. A structure can support weight while approaching its limits. Something may appear complete even as its underlying framework begins to separate.

This insight gives the exhibition a broader emotional and political resonance. The exposed warp becomes an image of vulnerability, but also of persistence. The hanging thread may suggest incompletion, yet it also represents continued possibility. A partially woven field contains both what has been accomplished and what remains open.

Frances Trombly and Miami’s Artistic Infrastructure

Trombly lives and works in Miami and earned a BFA from the Maryland Institute College of Art. Alongside her studio practice, she is a co-founder and co-director of Dimensions Variable, the nonprofit contemporary art organization established in Miami with artist Leyden Rodriguez-Casanova.

This institutional role provides an important context for What Holds. Trombly not only examines structures of support through fiber and wood; she has participated directly in building cultural structures that support artists, exhibitions, dialogue, and experimentation.

Her artistic and organizational practices are therefore connected by a shared concern: the creation of conditions under which something else can exist. A loom holds threads so cloth can emerge. A stretcher supports a painted surface. An artist-run organization creates space for practices that may not receive sufficient institutional attention.

Support, in Trombly’s work, is never passive. It is a form of authorship.

What Remains Visible

What Holds does not offer a final image of equilibrium. Its power emerges from the refusal to hide strain, dependency, and incompletion.

Trombly reveals that every surface contains a history of contact. Every woven structure records pressure. Every frame distributes force. Every completed object depends upon repeated acts that are easily overlooked once the work enters public view.

By bringing those acts forward, she transforms the support into the subject and labor into a visible form of knowledge.

The exhibition’s most compelling proposition may be that what holds us together is not permanence, perfection, or absolute stability. It is the continuous work of maintaining relationships among separate elements—threads, bodies, materials, histories, and institutions.

Nothing in What Holds is simply held. Everything is being held, continually, through time.

Different Types of Drawing Classes: Artistic, Technical, Digital, and Specialized Instruction

drawing classes Miami

Different Types of Drawing Classes: Artistic, Technical, Digital, and Specialized Instruction

Drawing is not a single skill. It includes many approaches, methods, and professional applications. Some students want to learn how to sketch people and landscapes, while others are interested in architecture, product design, digital illustration, fashion, animation, or botanical studies.

Private and group drawing classes taught by professional artists can help students understand these different paths and choose the type of instruction that best supports their goals. These classes may be designed for beginners, teenagers, adults, art students, designers, illustrators, and experienced artists who want to strengthen specific skills.

Why Take Drawing Classes?

Drawing develops observation, coordination, concentration, imagination, and visual communication. It helps students understand form, proportion, space, light, movement, and composition.

A strong drawing course can teach students how to:

  • Observe more carefully
  • Build forms from simple shapes
  • Improve hand-eye coordination
  • Understand light and shadow
  • Create depth and perspective
  • Represent the human figure
  • Organize a composition
  • Develop a personal style
  • Communicate ideas visually
  • Build a professional or academic portfolio

The most appropriate class depends on the student’s interests, current level, and long-term goals.

Artistic Drawing Classes

Artistic drawing focuses on observation, expression, composition, and personal interpretation. It is ideal for students interested in fine art, illustration, painting, sculpture, or creative self-development.

These classes often include:

  • Still-life drawing
  • Portrait drawing
  • Figure drawing
  • Landscape drawing
  • Gesture drawing
  • Anatomy
  • Composition
  • Light and shadow
  • Texture
  • Experimental mark-making

Students may work with graphite, charcoal, ink, colored pencils, pastels, or mixed media.

Observational Drawing

Observational drawing teaches students to draw directly from real objects, people, plants, interiors, or landscapes.

The goal is not simply to copy what is visible. Students learn how to analyze proportion, shape, negative space, angles, values, and relationships between forms.

This type of drawing provides a strong foundation for nearly every visual-art discipline.

Expressive Drawing

Expressive drawing emphasizes emotion, movement, rhythm, and personal interpretation.

Students may explore:

  • Loose line work
  • Gesture
  • Distortion
  • Repetition
  • Automatic drawing
  • Emotional use of value
  • Unconventional materials

This approach is especially useful for students who want to move beyond strict realism and develop an individual visual language.

Portrait and Figure Drawing

Portrait and figure classes focus on the human face and body. Students study proportion, anatomy, posture, gesture, expression, and the effects of light.

These classes may use:

  • Photographic references
  • Mirrors
  • Anatomical models
  • Clothed models
  • Live models
  • Master artworks

Portrait and figure drawing are useful for fine artists, illustrators, animators, fashion designers, and sculptors.

Technical Drawing Classes

Technical drawing is more structured and precise. It is used to communicate dimensions, construction, function, and spatial relationships.

These classes are especially relevant for students interested in:

  • Architecture
  • Engineering
  • Interior design
  • Industrial design
  • Furniture design
  • Product development
  • Set design
  • Construction
  • Drafting

Technical drawing often requires accuracy, measurement, and standardized visual systems.

Perspective Drawing

Perspective helps students represent three-dimensional space on a flat surface.

Courses may cover:

  • One-point perspective
  • Two-point perspective
  • Three-point perspective
  • Interior spaces
  • Architectural exteriors
  • Streets and cityscapes
  • Circles and ellipses
  • Scale and proportion
  • Atmospheric perspective

Perspective is valuable for both artistic and technical drawing.

Architectural Drawing

Architectural drawing focuses on buildings, interiors, plans, sections, elevations, and spatial presentation.

Students may learn how to:

  • Draw rooms and structures
  • Use scale
  • Represent materials
  • Create floor plans
  • Develop elevations
  • Draw perspective views
  • Organize presentation sheets

An artist who also understands architecture and design can help students balance precision with visual clarity.

Product and Industrial Drawing

Product drawing teaches students how to represent objects clearly and convincingly.

Exercises may include:

  • Geometric construction
  • Ellipses
  • Rotating forms
  • Exploded views
  • Surface materials
  • Shading for volume
  • Design variations
  • Presentation sketches

This type of instruction is useful for students interested in product design, transportation design, furniture, fashion accessories, or invention.

Digital Drawing Classes

Digital drawing combines traditional artistic knowledge with digital tools. The basic principles of proportion, composition, anatomy, value, and perspective still apply, but students work on tablets, computers, or touchscreen devices.

Digital classes may include:

  • Digital sketching
  • Illustration
  • Concept art
  • Character design
  • Environmental design
  • Digital painting
  • Comics
  • Storyboarding
  • Animation preparation
  • Graphic composition

Students may use drawing tablets, styluses, and software designed for illustration or painting.

Digital Illustration

Digital illustration classes teach students how to create polished images for books, magazines, advertising, websites, games, and social media.

Students may study:

  • Layers
  • Brushes
  • Color selection
  • Line control
  • Masking
  • Texture
  • Lighting
  • Composition
  • File preparation

A professional artist can help students use software as a tool rather than allowing technical effects to replace drawing knowledge.

Character Design

Character-design classes focus on creating believable and visually distinctive figures.

Students may learn:

  • Shape language
  • Silhouette
  • Proportion
  • Facial expressions
  • Costume
  • Gesture
  • Turnarounds
  • Color schemes
  • Personality development

These skills are useful in animation, games, comics, children’s books, and entertainment design.

Concept Art and Environment Design

Concept-art classes teach students how to visualize characters, locations, objects, and worlds before they are produced in final form.

Students may create:

  • Interior environments
  • Landscapes
  • Fantasy worlds
  • Science-fiction cities
  • Props
  • Vehicles
  • Mood studies
  • Visual development boards

Strong perspective and composition skills are essential in this field.

Specialized Drawing Classes

Specialized classes focus on a particular subject, technique, profession, or creative goal.

These may include:

  • Botanical drawing
  • Fashion illustration
  • Medical illustration
  • Scientific illustration
  • Comics and graphic novels
  • Urban sketching
  • Children’s book illustration
  • Animal drawing
  • Jewelry design
  • Textile design
  • Calligraphy and line art
  • Portfolio preparation

Botanical Drawing

Botanical drawing teaches students to study plants, flowers, leaves, stems, and natural structures.

Classes may focus on:

  • Accurate observation
  • Contour
  • Texture
  • Symmetry
  • Organic structure
  • Graphite shading
  • Colored pencil
  • Ink
  • Watercolor combinations

This type of drawing can be scientific, decorative, expressive, or meditative.

Fashion Illustration

Fashion illustration combines figure drawing with clothing, textiles, proportion, gesture, and design.

Students may learn:

  • Fashion proportions
  • Dynamic poses
  • Fabric movement
  • Garment construction
  • Accessories
  • Color
  • Presentation boards
  • Personal style

Fashion classes are useful for aspiring designers, stylists, and illustrators.

Medical and Scientific Illustration

Medical and scientific drawing requires precision, clarity, and accurate representation.

Students may study:

  • Anatomy
  • Biological structures
  • Plants and animals
  • Cross-sections
  • Diagrams
  • Labels
  • Informational composition

This field often combines artistic skill with scientific knowledge.

Comics and Graphic Novels

Comic drawing involves visual storytelling, character development, action, sequence, and page design.

Students may learn:

  • Panel composition
  • Storyboarding
  • Character consistency
  • Facial expression
  • Perspective
  • Inking
  • Lettering
  • Visual pacing

These classes can be taught traditionally, digitally, or through a combination of both.

Urban Sketching

Urban sketching teaches students how to draw quickly from real environments.

Subjects may include:

  • Streets
  • Buildings
  • Cafés
  • Parks
  • Public transportation
  • People
  • Architectural details

Students often work in sketchbooks using pencil, ink, watercolor, or markers.

Private Drawing Classes

Private classes provide individualized instruction. The teacher can adapt each lesson to the student’s ability, interests, pace, and objectives.

Private instruction is especially helpful for:

  • Complete beginners
  • Students who need extra support
  • Adults returning to art
  • Portfolio preparation
  • Students with specific professional goals
  • Artists working through technical problems
  • Learners who prefer flexible scheduling
  • Students who feel uncomfortable in large groups

A private teacher can observe the student’s process closely and provide immediate corrections.

Lessons may be organized as a personalized program covering several types of drawing or focused on one specialized subject.

Group Drawing Classes

Group classes create a social and collaborative learning experience.

Students benefit from:

  • Instructor demonstrations
  • Shared exercises
  • Group critiques
  • Peer motivation
  • Different interpretations of the same subject
  • Creative community
  • More affordable instruction

Group classes may be organized by age, skill level, subject, or medium.

They are suitable for:

  • Beginners
  • Teenagers
  • Adults
  • Friends and family members
  • Community groups
  • Schools
  • Cultural organizations
  • Professional teams seeking creative development

A skilled artist-teacher can provide a common lesson while still offering individual guidance.

In-Person and Online Drawing Classes

Drawing classes can be offered in person or online.

In-Person Classes

In-person instruction allows the teacher to observe posture, hand movement, pressure, materials, and scale directly.

It is especially useful for:

  • Charcoal
  • Large-format drawing
  • Live-model sessions
  • Still life
  • Outdoor sketching
  • Material experimentation

Online Classes

Online classes offer flexibility and access to teachers who may not live nearby.

Students can participate from home and receive demonstrations, assignments, critiques, and personalized feedback.

Online classes work well for:

  • Digital drawing
  • Portfolio reviews
  • Perspective
  • Anatomy
  • Illustration
  • Individual coaching
  • Structured drawing programs

The best format depends on the student’s goals and learning preferences.

Why Study with a Professional Artist?

Professional artists bring practical experience from their own studio practice. They understand that learning to draw involves more than memorizing rules.

An artist-teacher can help students:

  • Simplify complex subjects
  • Develop visual judgment
  • Understand materials
  • Learn from mistakes
  • Revise effectively
  • Build confidence
  • Discover personal interests
  • Connect technique with expression
  • Prepare professional work

Artists can also introduce students to art history, contemporary practice, exhibitions, portfolios, and creative careers.

Materials Used in Different Drawing Classes

Materials vary according to the type of class.

Traditional artistic drawing may use:

  • Graphite
  • Charcoal
  • Ink
  • Colored pencils
  • Pastels
  • Conté
  • Toned paper
  • Sketchbooks

Technical drawing may require:

  • Rulers
  • T-squares
  • Compasses
  • Set squares
  • Mechanical pencils
  • Grids
  • Drafting paper

Digital classes may require:

  • Tablet
  • Stylus
  • Computer
  • Drawing software
  • Cloud storage
  • Digital portfolio tools

The instructor should provide a clear materials list before the course begins.

How to Choose the Right Drawing Class

Before enrolling, students should identify what they want to achieve.

Useful questions include:

  • Do I want to learn realistic drawing or creative expression?
  • Am I interested in fine art, design, illustration, or a profession?
  • Do I prefer traditional or digital tools?
  • Do I need private attention or enjoy group learning?
  • Am I preparing a portfolio?
  • Do I want short workshops or a long-term course?
  • Is the instructor a practicing artist?
  • Does the teacher have experience with my area of interest?
  • Will I receive individual feedback?
  • Are the classes appropriate for my age and level?

A good instructor should be able to explain the course structure and adapt the lessons when necessary.

Drawing Classes for Beginners

Beginners do not need previous experience.

A well-designed introductory course may begin with:

  • Line
  • Shape
  • Basic forms
  • Proportion
  • Negative space
  • Light and shadow
  • Simple perspective
  • Composition
  • Basic materials

Students should not feel pressured to create perfect drawings. The purpose of beginner classes is to build understanding, confidence, and regular practice.

Drawing Classes for Advanced Students

Advanced classes may focus on:

  • Complex anatomy
  • Master studies
  • Personal style
  • Professional portfolios
  • Large-scale drawing
  • Experimental media
  • Advanced perspective
  • Concept development
  • Exhibition preparation
  • Career goals

An experienced artist-teacher can provide critical feedback and help students move beyond technical competence toward a more individual body of work.

Benefits of Learning Different Types of Drawing

Studying more than one approach can make students more versatile.

For example:

  • Artistic drawing improves observation and expression.
  • Technical drawing strengthens precision and spatial thinking.
  • Digital drawing expands professional tools and production methods.
  • Specialized drawing connects skills to a subject or career.

Together, these approaches can develop both creative freedom and technical control.

Conclusion

Artistic, technical, digital, and specialized drawing classes offer different ways to understand and communicate the world visually.

Private classes provide personalized instruction and focused development, while group classes offer collaboration, shared learning, and creative community. When taught by professional artists, these courses combine technical knowledge with real studio experience, helping students develop stronger skills and a more confident artistic voice.

Whether a student wants to explore drawing as a hobby, prepare for art school, improve a professional portfolio, learn digital illustration, study architecture, or develop a specialized practice, the right class can provide a clear and rewarding path forward.

Canvas Surfaces for Artists: Custom, Stretched and Floating-Framed Canvases

Canvas Surfaces for Artists in Miami

Canvas Surfaces for Artists: Ready-Made, Custom, Framed, and by the Roll

Discover ready-made and custom stretched canvases, cotton and linen canvas by the yard, primed and unprimed surfaces, oversized formats, and floating-frame options.

A canvas is more than a neutral background. Its fiber, weave, weight, tension, texture, dimensions, and preparation influence how paint moves across the surface, how marks appear, and how the finished artwork is presented.

For artists, selecting the right canvas means finding a balance between medium, technique, scale, durability, visual character, and budget. Whether you need a ready-made stretched canvas, raw canvas by the yard, a custom oversized support, or a finished canvas with a floating frame, the surface should support the specific needs of your creative practice.

Canvas has served artists for centuries as a strong woven painting support, most commonly manufactured from linen or cotton. In the physical structure of a traditional painting, the fabric acts as the support beneath the ground, paint layers, and protective coatings.

Our Canvas Products and Services

We provide canvas solutions for professional artists, emerging artists, art students, galleries, designers, studios, and commercial creative projects.

Our services include:

  • Ready-made stretched canvases
  • Canvas by the yard, linear meter, or roll
  • Stretched canvases with floating frames
  • Custom stretched canvases
  • Standard and oversized formats
  • Primed and unprimed surfaces
  • Cotton, linen, and selected blended fabrics
  • Custom depths, profiles, and surface preparation

Whether you are creating one painting, developing an exhibition, producing a coordinated series, or planning a monumental installation, we can help you select and fabricate a canvas surface appropriate for your project.

Ready-Made Stretched Canvases

Ready-made stretched canvases offer a convenient solution for artists who work in standard dimensions. The canvas fabric is stretched over a wooden framework and prepared for painting, allowing the artist to begin working without having to construct the support.

These canvases are ideal for:

  • Studio painting
  • Art classes and workshops
  • Portraits and commissions
  • Exhibition series
  • Acrylic and oil painting
  • Experimental and mixed-media projects
  • Artists who regularly work in standard sizes

Ready-made canvases may be available in traditional profiles or deeper gallery-style formats. Gallery-depth stretcher bars create more substantial sides, allowing the artwork to be displayed without a conventional decorative frame when the artist prefers a clean, contemporary presentation.

The tension of a stretched canvas is important. A properly constructed support should remain evenly stretched, without unnecessary distortions, creases, or loose areas. Traditional expandable stretchers may also incorporate corner keys that allow tension to be adjusted when appropriate.

Custom Stretched Canvases

Not every artistic idea fits a standard commercial format. Custom stretched canvases allow artists to determine the exact width, height, depth, fabric, texture, and preparation required for a specific artwork.

We can fabricate custom canvases for:

  • Unusual or nonstandard dimensions
  • Large-scale paintings
  • Panoramic compositions
  • Square, vertical, or horizontal formats
  • Diptychs, triptychs, and modular installations
  • Murals and site-specific projects
  • Gallery and museum presentations
  • Residential, hospitality, and corporate commissions
  • Artists developing a consistent body of work

A custom canvas can also be made with a specific stretcher-bar depth, edge profile, fabric weight, or surface texture. These decisions are especially important for artists whose work depends on precise geometry, heavy material applications, highly controlled brushwork, staining, or large uninterrupted fields of color.

For oversized projects, the dimensions and construction should be evaluated carefully. The scale of the artwork may require reinforced stretcher bars, cross braces, specialized fabric tension, and installation planning to help maintain the structural integrity of the support.

Canvas by the Yard, Linear Meter, or Roll

Artists who prefer to stretch and prepare their own canvases can purchase canvas fabric by the yard, linear meter, or roll.

Canvas rolls provide maximum flexibility for artists who:

  • Produce many paintings in different dimensions
  • Work on monumental or oversized projects
  • Build their own stretcher frames
  • Need unusual proportions
  • Prefer to control the priming process
  • Paint directly on unstretched fabric
  • Create banners, installations, or textile-based works
  • Require multiple surfaces from the same fabric batch

Depending on the artist’s needs, canvas may be supplied primed or unprimed and in different widths, weights, fibers, and weave structures.

Purchasing canvas in continuous lengths can also help studios maintain consistency across a series. Multiple paintings can be created from the same material, reducing variations in texture, weave, color, and preparation.

Stretched Canvas with a Floating Frame

A floating frame gives a stretched canvas a refined, contemporary presentation while preserving the visibility of the artwork’s edges.

Instead of covering the sides of the painting, the frame is constructed with a small space between the canvas and the interior frame profile. This creates the visual effect that the artwork is floating inside the frame.

Floating frames are especially effective for:

  • Contemporary paintings
  • Abstract and geometric art
  • Gallery-depth canvases
  • Artwork with painted edges
  • Minimalist interiors
  • Gallery and exhibition presentations
  • Residential and hospitality installations
  • Paintings that do not require glazing

The frame can become an extension of the artwork without visually overpowering it. Depending on the project, floating frames may be created in natural wood, stained wood, painted finishes, black, white, metallic tones, or other custom finishes.

By producing the stretched canvas and floating frame as a coordinated unit, dimensions, spacing, depth, and presentation can be planned from the beginning rather than treated as separate decisions after the painting is completed.

Choosing the Right Canvas Material

The ideal canvas depends on the artist’s medium, working method, desired texture, scale, and budget. Cotton and linen are the most established natural fibers, although synthetic and blended fabrics are also used in contemporary artistic production.

Cotton Canvas

Cotton is one of the most widely used canvas materials because it is versatile, accessible, and available in numerous weights and textures.

It is appropriate for:

  • Acrylic painting
  • Oil painting when correctly prepared
  • Mixed-media work
  • Student and professional studio practice
  • Small and large paintings
  • Loose or expressive brushwork
  • General-purpose artistic production

Cotton duck canvas can range from relatively fine surfaces to heavier, more visibly textured fabrics. The selected weight should correspond to the dimensions of the artwork and the physical demands of the artist’s technique.

Linen Canvas

Linen has a long history as a painting support and remains highly valued by many professional artists and conservators. The Getty Conservation Institute identifies linen as one of the most historically significant and frequently selected fabrics in canvas painting traditions.

Fine linen can provide a closely woven, refined surface suitable for:

  • Detailed portraiture
  • Precise figurative painting
  • Glazing and layered oil techniques
  • Controlled line work
  • Paintings in which the fabric texture should remain subtle
  • Professional commissions and exhibition work

Heavier linen weaves can also provide a more pronounced material presence for expressive painting.

Linen is often positioned as a premium option, but material quality alone does not guarantee the longevity of an artwork. The weave, preparation, sizing, ground, stretcher construction, paint system, handling, and environmental conditions all contribute to the long-term behavior of a canvas painting.

Synthetic and Blended Canvas

Synthetic fibers and cotton-synthetic or linen-synthetic blends can provide consistent weave structures and alternative dimensional characteristics.

They may be suitable for:

  • Highly detailed painting
  • Smooth, controlled surfaces
  • Experimental techniques
  • Contemporary mixed-media work
  • Projects requiring a consistent manufactured texture
  • Artists seeking alternatives to traditional natural fibers

The compatibility of a synthetic or blended canvas with a particular primer, paint, adhesive, or fabrication method should be evaluated before use.

Understanding Canvas Texture or “Tooth”

The word tooth describes the degree of texture or surface resistance that interacts with the artist’s brush, drawing tool, or paint.

A rougher canvas can support:

  • Heavy impasto
  • Visible brushwork
  • Dry-brush techniques
  • Expressive mark-making
  • Thick applications of paint
  • Paintings in which texture is part of the visual language

A smoother canvas is often preferred for:

  • Fine details
  • Portraiture
  • Hyperrealism
  • Precise lines
  • Controlled glazing
  • Airbrush techniques
  • Thin paint applications
  • Images with subtle transitions

The ground also changes how the surface feels. A more absorbent ground may pull liquid from the paint and create a matte appearance, while a less absorbent surface can allow paint to remain more fluid and saturated. Gamblin notes that surface tooth and absorbency affect paint handling, line quality, and the final appearance of color.

Primed and Unprimed Canvas

Primed Canvas

Primed canvas has been coated with a ground that separates the paint from the fabric and creates a surface to which the paint can adhere. GOLDEN describes gesso as a bridge between the support and the painted image.

Primed canvas is convenient for artists who want a surface that requires minimal preparation. Depending on the product and intended medium, it may be prepared with:

  • Acrylic dispersion ground, commonly called acrylic gesso
  • Oil-based ground
  • Clear ground
  • Toned or colored ground
  • Smooth or textured ground
  • Specialty absorbent preparations

A professional-quality acrylic ground can be used as a preparation for acrylic painting and, when correctly applied in an appropriate system, for many oil-painting practices. Artists should always follow the technical recommendations of the paint and ground manufacturers.

Oil-primed canvas is intended for oil painting and offers a different level of absorbency, surface movement, and paint response. It should not be assumed to be compatible with water-based acrylic paint.

Unprimed Canvas

Unprimed canvas gives artists control over every stage of surface preparation.

It may be selected by artists who want to:

  • Apply their own sizing and ground
  • Create a custom texture
  • Use a colored or transparent preparation
  • Preserve the natural color of the fabric
  • Work with staining techniques
  • Paint directly on raw canvas with compatible materials
  • Create textile-based or mixed-media installations

For oil painting, natural fibers generally require an appropriate preparation system to reduce direct oil penetration into the fabric. Manufacturer guidance may recommend multiple ground layers or another suitable barrier, depending on the materials being used.

The Importance of Environment and Construction

Cotton and linen are responsive to environmental moisture. Changes in relative humidity can affect the dimensions and tension of textile supports, placing stress on the ground and paint layers.

For this reason, important artworks should be fabricated, stored, transported, and displayed with attention to:

  • Stable temperature and humidity
  • Proper canvas tension
  • Appropriate stretcher construction
  • Protection from direct moisture
  • Safe handling and transportation
  • Correct framing and hanging systems
  • Compatibility among fabric, ground, and paint
  • The total weight and dimensions of the artwork

No canvas should be described as permanently “archival” based only on the fiber from which it is made. Longevity depends on the complete material system, craftsmanship, environment, and care of the finished artwork.

A Canvas Made for Your Practice

Every artist works differently. Some need the affordability and versatility of cotton. Others prefer the refined weave of linen. Some require a ready-to-paint standard canvas, while others need a panoramic surface, an unusual depth, a monumental scale, or a canvas and floating frame designed as one complete object.

Our canvas services allow artists to select the dimensions, material, texture, preparation, depth, and presentation that best support their work.

To request a quote, send us:

  • The desired canvas dimensions
  • Preferred fabric type
  • Primed or unprimed finish
  • Intended painting medium
  • Stretcher-bar depth
  • Quantity required
  • Floating-frame preferences
  • Reference images or drawings
  • Installation or delivery requirements

Whether you need one canvas or an entire exhibition series, we can help create a surface designed around your artistic vision.

For custom stretched canvases, ready-made canvases, canvas rolls, floating frames, and specialty fabrication inquiries, contact:

The right canvas does more than hold an image. It establishes the physical foundation from which the artwork can grow.

Drawing the Anatomy of the Human Body: Private and Group Classes Taught by Professional Artists

Drawing the Anatomy of the Human Body in Miami

Drawing the Anatomy of the Human Body: Private and Group Classes Taught by Professional Artists

Learning to draw the human body is one of the most valuable forms of artistic training. Human anatomy teaches students how structure, movement, proportion, balance, and expression work together. It also develops skills that can be applied to portraiture, illustration, fashion design, animation, sculpture, painting, and character development.

Private and group anatomy drawing classes taught by professional artists provide students with a structured way to understand the body while improving their observational and technical abilities. These classes can be adapted for beginners, teenagers, adults, art students, and practicing artists seeking stronger figurative drawing skills.

Why Study Human Anatomy for Drawing?

Drawing the human figure is challenging because the body is both complex and constantly changing. Even a small shift in posture affects the position of the shoulders, spine, hips, arms, and legs.

Students who study anatomy learn to look beyond the surface. Instead of copying the outline of a figure, they begin to understand the underlying structure that gives the body volume, stability, and movement.

Anatomy drawing helps students study:

  • The proportions of the human body
  • The skeleton and major bone structures
  • The principal muscle groups
  • Balance and body weight
  • Gesture and movement
  • Foreshortening
  • Light and shadow on the figure
  • The relationship between anatomy and expression

This knowledge allows artists to draw the body more accurately and with greater confidence.

Private Anatomy Drawing Classes

Private lessons offer personalized instruction based on the student’s level, interests, and goals.

Some students may need help with basic proportions, while others may want to study muscle structure, dynamic poses, portrait anatomy, or portfolio development. A professional artist can identify specific areas that need improvement and create exercises designed around the student’s needs.

Private classes are especially useful for:

  • Beginners who prefer individual attention
  • Students preparing applications or portfolios
  • Artists who struggle with proportion or movement
  • Illustrators and animators developing characters
  • Fashion students studying the figure
  • Adults returning to art after a long break
  • Students seeking a flexible schedule

Because the instructor can focus entirely on one student, corrections and demonstrations can be more detailed. The pace can also be adjusted according to the student’s learning style.

Group Anatomy Drawing Classes

Group classes provide a collaborative environment in which students can learn from both the instructor and one another.

Participants may draw from photographs, anatomical models, mannequins, master artworks, or live models, depending on the structure of the course. The instructor may begin with a demonstration and then guide students through timed poses, proportion exercises, and longer studies.

Group classes are beneficial for:

  • Students who enjoy learning in a social setting
  • Friends who want to take art classes together
  • Teenagers interested in figure drawing
  • Community art groups
  • Art students seeking regular practice
  • Adults looking for a creative and educational activity

Seeing different interpretations of the same pose can help students understand that figure drawing is not only about accuracy. It also involves personal expression, rhythm, line, and visual decision-making.

What Students May Learn

A human anatomy drawing course can include a wide range of technical and creative subjects.

Gesture Drawing

Gesture drawing focuses on the movement and energy of the body. Students work quickly to capture the direction, balance, and rhythm of a pose.

These exercises help prevent stiff figures and encourage students to see the body as a unified action rather than a collection of separate parts.

Human Proportions

Students learn traditional proportional systems while also understanding that real bodies vary in height, shape, age, and structure.

The goal is not to create one idealized body type, but to understand how different parts relate to one another.

The Skeleton

The skeleton provides the basic framework of the body. Students may study the skull, rib cage, pelvis, spine, arms, hands, legs, and feet.

Understanding bone structure makes it easier to draw believable poses and recognize important landmarks beneath the skin.

Muscle Structure

Students learn the location and function of major muscle groups. This does not require memorizing every anatomical term. Instead, the focus is on understanding how muscles affect form and movement.

Important areas often include:

  • The shoulders and upper back
  • The chest and abdomen
  • The arms and forearms
  • The hips and thighs
  • The knees and calves
  • The neck and face

Volume and Form

Artists often simplify the body into basic three-dimensional forms such as spheres, cylinders, boxes, and wedges.

This method helps students understand the figure in space and makes difficult poses easier to construct.

Foreshortening

Foreshortening occurs when part of the body points toward or away from the viewer. Arms, legs, and the torso may appear shorter or compressed.

Students learn how perspective changes the visible proportions of the figure.

Light and Shadow

Shading helps communicate volume, muscle structure, and the direction of light.

Students learn to identify highlights, middle values, core shadows, reflected light, and cast shadows on the body.

Hands, Feet, and Faces

Hands, feet, and facial features are often considered difficult because they contain many small structures and expressive details.

Focused lessons can help students simplify these areas before adding complexity.

Drawing from Live Models

Live model drawing is one of the most effective ways to study the human body because it allows students to observe real proportions, posture, balance, and light.

Sessions may include:

  • Short gesture poses
  • Medium-length studies
  • Long poses for detailed drawings
  • Clothed models
  • Costumed models
  • Portrait sessions
  • Themed figure studies

Professional instructors establish clear classroom expectations and maintain a respectful, educational environment.

For younger students, classes are generally designed with age-appropriate references, clothed models, mannequins, or photographic materials.

Materials Used in Anatomy Drawing Classes

Students may work with:

  • Graphite pencils
  • Charcoal
  • Conté crayons
  • Ink
  • Pastels
  • Colored pencils
  • Sketchbooks
  • Newsprint
  • Toned paper
  • Digital drawing tablets

Charcoal is often used for gesture and figure drawing because it allows broad, expressive marks. Graphite is useful for detailed studies and controlled shading.

The instructor can recommend materials based on the student’s experience and the goals of the class.

Why Study with a Practicing Artist?

A professional artist offers more than anatomical information. Artists understand how technical knowledge must be transformed into visual expression.

They can teach students how to simplify a complex pose, choose the strongest lines, exaggerate movement when appropriate, and avoid becoming overwhelmed by details.

Practicing artists can also demonstrate how anatomy is used differently in:

  • Fine art
  • Illustration
  • Animation
  • Comics
  • Fashion
  • Sculpture
  • Concept art
  • Portraiture
  • Medical or scientific illustration

Their studio experience helps students understand that mistakes, revisions, and experimentation are normal parts of artistic development.

Anatomy and Personal Style

Studying anatomy does not mean every student must create highly realistic drawings. Anatomical knowledge can support many different styles, including abstraction, expressionism, cartoons, comics, and contemporary figurative art.

Artists such as Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, Edgar Degas, Käthe Kollwitz, Egon Schiele, and many others studied the human body deeply, yet developed very different visual languages.

The purpose of anatomy is not to restrict creativity. It gives artists a stronger foundation from which they can simplify, distort, exaggerate, or interpret the body with intention.

Benefits Beyond Drawing

Human figure drawing also develops:

  • Concentration
  • Observation
  • Patience
  • Visual memory
  • Hand-eye coordination
  • Confidence
  • Spatial awareness
  • Respect for the diversity of human bodies

Students often become more attentive to posture, movement, expression, and the relationship between body and emotion.

Figure drawing can also encourage a more thoughtful understanding of the body as an expressive, complex, and individual form rather than an idealized image.

Choosing Between Private and Group Classes

Private classes are ideal for students who want focused instruction, rapid correction, flexible scheduling, or a customized program.

Group classes are often better for students who enjoy community, shared exercises, live-model sessions, and learning from different artistic approaches.

Before enrolling, students may want to ask:

  • Is the class suitable for beginners?
  • Is the instruction designed for adults, teenagers, or both?
  • Are live models used?
  • Are the models clothed or unclothed?
  • What materials are required?
  • Does the instructor teach traditional or contemporary methods?
  • Is individual feedback included?
  • Can lessons be adapted for portfolio preparation?
  • Are online classes available?

A strong course should combine technical instruction with encouragement, respect, and opportunities for personal development.

Conclusion

Private and group classes in human anatomy drawing provide students with a deeper understanding of the figure and a stronger foundation for visual art.

Through gesture, proportion, skeletal structure, muscle study, light, and movement, students learn to represent the body with greater accuracy and expression. Under the guidance of professional artists, anatomy becomes more than a technical subject. It becomes a way to understand human presence, emotion, and movement through drawing.

Whether the goal is to improve a portfolio, prepare for art school, develop characters, study traditional figure drawing, or begin a new creative practice, anatomy classes can offer a disciplined, inspiring, and rewarding artistic experience.