Within the painting area, students are encouraged and inspired to research the full range of contemporary art practice, to be critically aware and experiment in accord with their individual strengths and direction.

The Painting area is studio-based and provides an appropriate skill base, encourages critical and analytical thinking, and provides students to experience a range of areas related to creative expression. While the early stages are project based, innovation and experimentation is always encouraged particularly in the context of new-media and its relationship to contemporary painting practice. In the later stages, students are assisted to develop their own formal. Conceptual and methodological interests and direction in particular aspects of contemporary painting practice.

The Painting area takes advantage of being centrally located in the heart of the urban city centre, feeding from and into this dynamic cultural hub that is the city of Melbourne. There are field-trips into the landscape, group tours to significant exhibitions in other cities, and a student exchanges with Art Schools in Europe, the Asia/Pacific region and America.

The Bachelor of Arts (Fine Art) program offered by RMIT University School of Art is recognised as one of the leading programs of its kind in Australia and South East Asia.

All staff are professional practicing artists, writers and critics. The program is supplemented by a visiting artists program. The School provides full studio facilities and well equipped specialist workshops and laboratories as appropriate to the needs of students studying contemporary art.

Program Content

In first year, the aim is to introduce a problem solving painting program designed to motivate and involve students in analytical thinking, visual perception and intuitive sensibilities and controlled experiments relative to contemporary painting practices. Components of the course are concerned with concepts, materials and methods of production and picture construction. The program is primarily project –based, with each project designed in a way so as to challenge and extend the students relationship to contemporary art practice.

In second year, the aim is to consolidate formal and technical skills and encourage experimentation with concepts, painting processes and materials and to explore the nature of self-directed learning. Visual research through drawing and mixed media is encouraged.

The third year program is self-directed. Students, with the help and support of the teaching staff, write their own studio work proposal outlining their areas of formal and conceptual investigation. Students are encouraged to work independently in their studio practice. A series of individual and group tutorials are used as the bases of developing analytical and critical responses to art making. The aim is to encourage intellectual and aesthetic involvement in arts practice and to develop appropriate formal, technical and conceptual skills at a level appropriate to professional practice.

At all levels of study, the program encourages an investigation of new-media in relation to contemporary painting practice. Students are actively engaged in working in the studios and aesthetic, practical and technical problems are regularly discussed with students at these times. Specialist lectures and individual and group tutorials form the bases of a teaching methodology which focuses on the individual needs of each student.

Career Prospects
The program is aimed primarily at those who wish to become professional artists. RMIT graduates form a significant part of the body of major artists in Australia.

Painting Staff