Keith Fox, M.F.A.

      With an awareness of the social, historical, and aesthetic aspects of cultural difference, and while embracing a range of artistic voices, I believe that each student's creative direction is perforce affected by many factors, including, but not limited to, the following: future goals, the marketplace, public and private life. In other words, I enable students to do work that suits their own particular needs and abilities, yet, at the same time, I provide students with relevant examples drawn from the history of art that show how the visual arts are not only an expression of technical skill, but also a liberal exercise of the spirit.

      First and foremost, I respond to each student individually and never compare individual students to one another. Furthermore, I recognize that each student's choice of materials, manner of working, type of problem-solving skills, and manner of expression fit together into a unique package that describes each student's personal idiom. Moreover, I start with each student wherever he or she is in terms of development as an artist, help him or her to gain the technical confidence necessary to permit his or her signature style to unfold and, for further library research and creative thinking, I provide each student with visual references, i.e., names of both historical and contemporary visual artists whose modes of personal expression are relevant to each student's goals.

      Consequently, I believe that in teaching students how to discern what is aesthetically appropriate or excellent for a given audience through a process that involves visual research, i.e., both collecting visual materials and the making of studies in an artist's shorthand diary to use as springboards for larger scale works, visually analyzing these works in progress, refining one's vision through this analysis, and implementing the new works of art into practical effect, i.e., a student show in the school or through other means approved by the school, such as competitive exhibitions. Such competitive exhibits might be sponsored either by a manufacturer of the finest art supplies and paints in which entries are fully refereed by a selection committee or by a community center that seeks to obtain works of art for display on its premises through both the distribution of an annual exhibition prospectus and the judging of entries submitted in response to that prospectus by a community-based exhibition committee.

      Ultimately, the art student in a studio program must learn to gauge the relative importance of all factors in artistic creation through a customary course of academic study, as well as to be exposed to the cultural practices of museums, galleries, and art centers in one or more of the following areas of study: marketing and public relations, catalogue design, scene design, exhibit installation, or by serving as lecturers or tour guides.

      Finally, my teaching practice in the studio classroom is as follows:

1. to give background information on the principles of painting and drawing;
2. to have students explore, through careful and directed observation, systematic procedures and organized knowledge in order to develop a high standard of technique as well as a general knowledge of the mechanical details of painting and drawing in a studio environment equipped to allow such full development of their ideas;
3. to discuss in class the techniques, as well as the materials and equipment of painting and drawing;
4. to structure in-class studio work by assignments, using a variety of styles, subjects, and techniques, and to end each such regular studio class period with a short class critique for reviewing class work, concepts, and progress;
5. to structure work outside of class that will encourage independent thinking, creativity, resourcefulness, and the exploration of pictorial ideas;
6. to require that students complete outside of class paintings and drawings that will be critiqued in class by the class in extended critiques reserved for the critical analysis and reviewing of each other's work as well as the discussion of those works in light of assigned readings intended to give the student an understanding of his or her own place as a visual artist in the historical and social continuum;
7. to require that each student have a final individual critique with the instructor on work produced throughout the semester, plus on a painting-and-drawing shorthand diary produced in preparation for all of the above work.

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