Exploring Abstract Art

Engage with techniques that stem from both seeing and sensing. Abstraction allows us to explore the unreal, make the invisible visible.

Course Description: “Abstraction allows a man to see with his mind what he cannot physically see with his eyes.” – Arshile Gorky In this course, students will engage with abstraction techniques that stem from both seeing and sensing. In a world rich with contradiction, incongruity, and oddness, objects are not always what they seem. Our homes, our favorite items, and the places we go hold emotional associations and sense memories that are completely unique and cannot always be observed, Objects and places mean something beyond their physical and visual properties. Abstraction in art allows us to explore the unreal, make the invisible visible, and actualize the impossible. Materials List: Students may use acrylic or oil, whatever they prefer. Recommended pigments: Titanium white Hansa yellow Cadmium yellow medium Cadmium red Permanent alizarin crimson Ultramarine blue Cerulean blue Yellow ochre Raw umber Viridian Ivory black As much as possible, try to avoid purchasing anything that says “hue”. Surfaces: 12 small surfaces for mark-making studies, between 8x10” and 11x15” 2 medium surfaces for longer paintings, 16x20” Surfaces may include paper, canvas board, stretched canvas, Masonite or birch plywood panels, Arches oil paper… your choice, so long as the surfaces are properly prepared and ready to be painted on before the start of each class Brushes: Long-handle synthetic or bristle brushes in a range of sizes. I would recommend sizes 2, 4, 8, and 12 for variety. Brushes come in several shapes, including flat, bright, filbert, and round. A range of sizes of flats and rounds will be more than enough to begin.

Miscellaneous: A Tarp to protect the floor Palette (either palette paper, or a piece of glass, or a handheld wooden palette…) Painting knife Rags 2 glass jars with lids for water or solvent Odorless turpenoid or other odorless mineral spirits if you chose to use oils About Megan: Megan Wolfkill (b. 1996) is a Cincinnati-based painter and dancer who contemplates tenderness, personal histories, and place-based imagery in her abstract and nonobjective paintings. She was the 2025-2026 Manifest Artist-in-Residence (MAR) and was the 2024-2025 Scholar-in-Residence at Manifest Gallery in Cincinnati, OH. Her two-person show to culminate her MAR year opened May 2026. Megan earned her MFA in Studio Art with a concentration in Painting + Drawing at the University of Tennessee where her thesis exhibition titled Back-to-Back opened at the Ewing Gallery of Art + Architecture in March 2024. She was a finalist in the 2024 Miami University Yeck Young Painters Competition. Megan has had artwork in juried exhibitions in Tennessee, Illinois, Louisiana, South Dakota, Wisconsin, and Ohio. Megan has attended residencies at Penland School of Craft in 2019 and 2020 and the Hambidge Center in 2019. Her work has been featured in…