Show & Tell: VES 124r, "The Narrative in Painting"

While some courses strive to limit students to a single subject, VES 124r, “The Narrative in Painting,” is a blank canvas. The class is taught by Visiting Professor Maureen Gallace, a working artist who actually commutes from New York on a weekly basis to teach the course.

Having previously taught at NYU, Gallace thinks of teaching as a refreshing opportunity to provide students with instruction equal to what she received as a student. And if the response of her students is any indication, she certainly is succeeding in her goal.

The course is structured as an independent study with only one overarching theme: personal narrative. It is a premise specifically chosen to better allow students to access their own ideas and develop their personal styles in a series of paintings on a subject of their own choosing.

This task is thought to be one of the most difficult aspects of the course as it leaves it to the students to decide how they want to spend the semester. Yet students also characterize this challenge as one of the most attractive features of the class.

According to Melinda S. Rodriguez ’07, this freedom of choice creates a relaxed atmosphere where “you can paint anything you want.” Lydia C. Conklin ’06 agrees, adding that the class’s structure allows the students to be on their own personal schedules and paint according to their interests, as mutable as they may be.

Conklin has moved, over the course of the sesmester from depicting summer camp scenes to working with poses of children in traditional childhood settings like baseball games, a contextual shift made possible by the fluidity of the course. The class’s one painting a week guideline also induces greater exploration of new styles and focuses.

Such subject changes seem to be a trademark of the paintings produced by the class. Jessica Yang ’08 has shifted her focus from painting places to exploring friendships between individuals in works like a canvas of her and her friend on a snowy Chicago street.

Indeed, the class’ work is extremely varied?looking around the room there are canvases of children, buildings, dogs, or even more abstract works. According to one graduate student, Jooe Kim, this diversity has allowed her to learn by looking around the room.

To keep with the theme of personal narrative, most of the students base their paintings on personal photos. The class was even provided with disposable cameras during their first week to help them come up with topics. But recreating these photos is not the intent of the class; as Kim says, their photos are simply “a sounding board.”

Instead, the class attempts to depict moments lost to photos or nonexistent in reality. As Kim remarks, “in photos, you already have a subject in two dimensions”; therefore, the intent of the paintings is to restore their depth. Kim herself has a series of paintings concentrating on her nephew’s dog in imagined locations.

But real animals are not the only ones that serve as inspirations for the paintings. Hyemin Na ’06 depicts fantastical creatures, a feat she accomplishes by basing her work on stuffed animals she brings to class. A large stuffed lion—out of place in many a Harvard classroom—sits in the center of the studio, just another testament to the remarkable flexibility and variety of the course.