● Program Overview

Painting & Drawing

Mondays, 7-8 PM EST, 2x/month

Each session kicks off with a short lecture, artist interviews, or other material that connects what you're making to a global range of artists, past and present. From there, we dig into a theme for the week: color, composition, storytelling, memory, politics, or the use of found images. We will then see how it shows up (or doesn't) in everyone's work.

This is a friendly but rigorous course for artists who want real, in-depth feedback on their work — the kind you'd get from a studio visit, but with a whole group thinking alongside you. Whether you've been making art for decades or are still finding your footing, you're welcome here.

Don't worry if you don't consider yourself a "painter" or "drawer" in the traditional sense. We're taking a wide-open view of what drawing and painting can be today. That might mean painting that spills into sculpture, or work that blurs the line between drawing, video, and photography. If you're curious about where the edges of these mediums are, you're in the right place.

Marcelino’s approach as a teacher is simple: meet you where you're at, then push you to figure out what really matters in your work and where it could go next. Everyone shares, everyone chimes in, and no piece is ever "finished" in terms of how it can be read or understood.

You don't need any painting or drawing experience to join. What you do need is curiosity, a genuine commitment to your practice, and a willingness to experiment and be surprised.

Enroll Now for TAAS School

Meet the Instructor

Marcelino Stuhmer

ARTIST & educator

Marcelino Stuhmer is a Dutch-Indonesian American artist, writer, and educator whose work explores the unstable boundaries between history, memory, fiction, and the archive. Working across painting, installation, photography, and narrative, he constructs speculative histories in which overlooked objects and images become portals into questions of colonialism, displacement, identity, and time.

Stuhmer received his MFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and was a resident at the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam and the Skowhegan School of Painting & Sculpture. He received the Royal Prize for Painting in the Netherlands and the Arte Laguna Prize for Best Foreign Artist at the Venice Arsenale. His work has been exhibited internationally at institutions including the Chicago Cultural Center, Kunstmuseum Den Haag, Essl Museum, and the Venice Arsenale.

With 20 years of teaching experience at institutions like the University of Chicago, The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (UW-M), and the University of the Arts (UArts) in Philadelphia, Stuhmer's teaching mirrors his practice: patient, curious, and unafraid of ambiguity. He meets students where they are, then pushes them to find the ideas underneath the surface of their work.

● Program Overview

Frequently Asked Questions

  • TAAS is for artists, curators, makers, and doers at every stage of their artistic life. Many of our members already have undergraduate or graduate art degrees. We believe strongly that this mixed-level experience is an incredible opportunity.

  • The uniqueness of TAAS is that our instructors are often working artists and curators with complex schedules, therefore you’ll see amazing artists come, go and return from quarter to quarter.

  • TAAS is not accredited — intentionally. We believe the most valuable art education happens in dialogue with working artists and curators, not through institutional checkboxes.

  • TAAS operates on Zoom embedded in a networking software that operates as our digital campus. The platform includes a variety of messaging options, profile pages for artists to represent themselves and their work, and clubs in which they can host break-out sessions outside of classes.

  • The Alternative Art School uses Mighty Networks as our online campus and platform. This media-based learning environment allows artists to collaborate, upload their work, and share across vast distances.

  • TAAS is an online school and students need access to a dependable wifi network and a desktop or laptop computer with a working webcam and microphone. Some students find Direct Ethernet cables helpful to boost connectivity if their wifi networks are unstable.

  • While TAAS is not a non-profit, we have a fiscal sponsor, Fractured Atlas, that accepts donations on our behalf and offers a tax-deduction for all donations. We certainly encourage those with means and a big heart to support this initiative (see “Support” tab to donate.)