The Glasgow School of Art

Painting and Printmaking is the largest specialist programme within the School of Fine Art. The programme of study is practical and theoretical, focusing on enquiry and production in a lively studio environment. Students are led by their own research and supported to draw together form, content and contextualisation.

The programme aims to equip students with material and technical knowledges, critical insights and tools of communication. It supports them to shape and pursue careers in the visual arts or related cultural fields.

Each year is designed to buildupon the previous year in terms of technical development, content, reflection and research. Students are supported to connect with histories and legacies of art-making alongside contemporary discourse, before developing their own personal and collective study paths and programmes of work in the final year.

Through bespoke tuition and collective discussion, staff engage students in acquiring reflective, critical and practical skills essential to art-making. All students will be exposed to an appropriately inclusive and wide range of views and approaches to painting and printmaking practices.

Painting

An awareness of histories and applications of painting alongside contemporary debate are all fundamental to our programme of study, which acknowledges and critiques painting’s legacies, and prioritises experiment and innovation.

Painting at The Glasgow School of Art reflects the complex and changing conditions, ethics and currencies of art-making, responding to new ideas and encouraging innovation. Painting is understood as a vehicle of thought, a capture technology and an intellectual discipline capable of expressive powers. The programme encompasses a wide range of approaches to the subject and students have the opportunity to extend their work, in addition to printmaking, into an expanded field, including exhibition-making.

Printmaking

Printmaking at The Glasgow School of Art is rooted in an exploration of visual representation and dissemination aligned to the materials, processes and formats of established and developing technologies.

Students will be given the tools to negotiate relationships between reproduction and expression, the original and the copy, fine art and the distribution of information. Teaching will support the development of an awareness of the print as both a singular and distributable form of visual art. The programme provides the resources for creation of work in print informed by critical debate and the social environment.

The three main areas of technical provision in the workshops at The Glasgow School of Art are etching, lithography and silkscreen. There are also extensive facilities for relief printing, photo-mechanical and reprographic processing, textile printing and a comprehensive print-specific digital imaging suite.

Fine Art Critical Studies

As an integral component of your degree course, the department of Fine Art Critical Studies (FACS) provides students with dedicated Learning & Teaching addressing aesthetic, critical, and theoretical issues and debates in fine art and the historical contexts of contemporary art practices in globalised conditions.

Across Years 1-3, FACS courses are taught one day per week via a combination of discipline-specific courses, cross-disciplinary core lectures, and elective courses which evolve from the research of the staff team. In Semester 1 of Year 4, students undertake a Supervised research project following one of four options for written submissions: Critical Journal, Curatorial Rationale, Extended Essay (20 Credits) or Dissertation (40 Credits).

More information on the department and staff profiles can be found here.