Senn Arts Visual Art

Visual Arts is an intensive visual art program that addresses concepts in visual art as well as informed and critical decision-making.  The courses in this program provide students with an opportunity to explore and experiment with combinations of various media and processes. Students will master their abilities using the elements and principles of visual art to create successful artwork as well as further investigate concepts of imagination, observation, and expression.

Students are expected to work on longer-range projects, do research, keep a sketchbook, critique and develop a high quality portfolio. Students are expected to take initiative to develop their own commitments to content and personal voice.

An approach supported by concepts and individual instruction requires students to ask more questions of themselves and their work than it answers.  This method offers a more informed perspective to their own repertoire, resulting in a student’s ongoing pursuit of learning and growth.

Equal weight is given to formal skill building and the involvement of content in the work of students at all levels of their development. Students engage in problem-solving strategies that reinforce the integration of a conceptual idea with its physical manifestation. Dialogue in the classroom helps clarify not only the student’s material decisions, but the reasoning behind those decisions.  It is important to address why an artwork exists as well as how.


Miriam Dolnick, [email protected]
Casey Murtaugh, [email protected]
Jesse Wyss, [email protected]

First Year Visual Art
Foundation: Who am I? Who are we?
The first year program involves a process of self reflection while providing a foundation based on comprehensive technical, theoretical, and historical studies.


Sophomore Visual Art
Artistic Language: How do I get there? Where do we come from?
The second year program involves the development of artistic language. By increasing exposure to a wider and increasingly sophisticated system of Reflection and Transformation as well as more in depth explorations of Methodology Tools and Techniques, and the beginning of a honing of skills and narrowing of a specific interest or focus.


Junior Visual Art
Artistic Voice: What am I trying to say?
The third year program begins with the emergence of a personal Artistic Voice. will be nurtured through this first year of advanced study. The ability to understand Intent as well as the all encompassing concepts of Purpose and Meaning will form the structure of this first year of advanced study.


Senior Visual Art
Artistic Identity: Where are we going?
The fourth year program involves a thoroughly advanced study involving the convergence of advancing techniques and artistic identity with the continuing process of artistic emergence.