Drawing from Masters
GSD 2411, Seminar, Spring 2004, 2005, 2009

This workshop is designed to offer the beginner or intermediate painter the opportunity to develop a relationship, in painting, between perception and abstract invention of pictorial space. For the architect, to have a secondary and independent form of visual research, the investigation of painting should be as second nature. Freed from the obligations of program, site, structure, or even ideological forces, this act of invention permits the architect to pursue the visual ideas of space as sponsored by this unique medium, and to pursue visual metaphor and the cultivation of associations and references in a condensed, rich, complexity. At issue, also, is the use of abstraction, or non-objective, painting language. Geometric abstraction, already familiar to the architect for its formal similarity to building design, is only one amongst many types of 'abstract' work. One only need think of the differences between Rothko, Pollack, Stella, Newman, Twombley, Martin, Poons, Diebenkorn, and DeKooning to know how far reaching the definition of abstraction is. It is also a belief that abstraction is still in its infancy and that abstraction remains uncharted and incomplete; a tremendous opportunity to place at the feet of art the evidence of discovery.

This workshop has another goal; to stimulate within the student a love for the pursuit of visual ideas invented "out of the head." Although the title of the workshop indicates a reliance on visual reality, it is offered here as a method by which the pursuit of pictorial inventions has a subject. To paraphrase Mark Rothko,'There is no great painting about nothing.' How much of our creativity in architectural design is conducted in an abstract venue, how much closer to architectural design can the inventions of abstract painting bring formal, iconographic, and metaphoricideas? It is not the purpose of the workshop to build such a bridge between painting and architecture outright, indeed, it will hardly be discussed. It is all too clear that the ambition of painting is not the ambition of architecture even though it is equally true that both spring from the same source and compulsion to expression. Our discourse will be one that seeks to make paintings powerful, imaginative and individual.

Visual Studies
GSD 2101, Fall

This course emphasizes the construction of space on the two-dimensional surface by way of freehand drawing. In-class visual exercises identify key concepts in the construction of volume and introduce the student of architecture to techniques and methods of drawing. Homework assignments extend the in-class lesson to the subject of an architectural motif. The student is asked to represent architectural spaces in varying ways, culminating in a visual essay of an architectural subject. Acuity of visual perception, accuracy in measurement and proportion, precision in construction, and an introduction to the ideas of visual structure and critical analysis are issues in this drawing studio. The representation of building design in plan and section attend the freehand drawing focus. The course intends to introduce the relationship between visual perception and analytical construction.

The Marathon Drawing Studio
GSD 2411, Seminar, Spring 2006

FIELD PAINTING

This seminar/workshop introduces the practice of plein air painting to the architect. The issues of color and spatial invention through the medium of oil paint is taught initially in the studio and through the collection of drawings at the Fogg Museum's Mongan Drawing Center. The workshop shifts to exterior sites for painting, visiting sites along the Boston waterfront area for subjects in the second half of the semester.

An introduction to the medium and support of oil painting and to the theory of complimentary color theory is supplied. Studio visits to Boston and New York area painters and museum visits both the Fogg and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, NYC, is woven into the course schedule.

Painting and Paint — Studio Practice; with Oil
GSD 2411, Seminar, Spring 2003

The premise of this workshop is to establish a relationship, in oil painting, between individual experience by perception and the language(s) of abstraction and representation. The workshop focuses on the interpretation of individual memory for the function of imagining in painting.

An introduction to the medium and support of oil painting and to the theory of complimentary color theory is supplied. Studio visits to Boston area painters and museum visits to the Fogg and the MFA are woven into the course schedule.

Drawing on the Urban Realm
GSD 2400, Spring

This is a free-hand drawing seminar conducted in the field, out-of-doors. Weekly trips to drawing sites are coordinated with lectures on visual structure and with the drawing collection at the Fogg of seminal artists who are and have been habitual draftspersons of the city. Our motif, the 19th century industrial belt that surrounds the City of Boston, contains an array of visual conditions instrumental to acquiring the understanding of visual perception in drawing. The visual problems intrinsic to perspective, the observation of plane projection, the grasp of volume, and the nature of pictorial space contribute to the understanding of creating a visual whole in drawing. An introduction to materials in drawing is offered: graphite, conte, and charcoal give way to ink and oil/linseed as mediums for drawing. The instruments of drawing graphite stick, brush, and brailler are introduced to assist the perception of line and value and introduce a wider range of mark making.