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Course Description
This eight-week course is designed for practicing artists who want to deepen the relationship between material process and artistic development. Moving between historical and contemporary painting systems, the course introduces animal glue distemper, traditional gesso, egg tempera, casein, oil-egg emulsion, and acrylic mediums.
More than a technical workshop, the course asks how materials can become active participants in each artist’s thinking. Artists will be encouraged to bring their existing studio concerns, images, sketches, surfaces, objects, or works in progress into the class. Each material method will be introduced as a way to expand what is already taking shape in each artist’s practice.
At the midpoint of the course, artists will participate in a critique and evaluation session, considering how the material experiments are beginning to intersect with their own artistic concerns. The second half of the course introduces Golden acrylic systems as a contemporary counterpart to historical binders, with particular attention to acrylic mediums, gels, grounds, absorbent surfaces, additives, transfers, skins, and experimental applications.
Jan Dickey’s experience as an artist-in-residence at the Sam & Adele Golden Foundation provides a direct connection to the technical and experimental possibilities of contemporary acrylic materials. During that residency, he conducted an in-depth exploration of Golden Artist Colors mediums, which will inform the acrylic portion of the course. He also has over ten years of experience using water-based animal protein binders in his own practice, an exploration he began during a period of classical training at the Academy of Classical Design in Southern Pines, North Carolina.
Artists in this course will:
Understand the basic properties of animal glue, traditional gesso, distemper, egg tempera, casein, oil-egg emulsion, and acrylic mediums.
Learn how to prepare and use rabbit skin glue size, traditional gesso, distemper, egg tempera paint, casein paint, oil-egg emulsion, and selected Golden acrylic mediums.
Develop a working knowledge of how grounds and binders affect color, absorbency, texture, layering, drying time, surface quality, opacity, translucency, and material durability.
Build a personal archive of material tests, samples, recipes, and technical notes.
Incorporate material research into their own studio interests, images, objects, surfaces, or ongoing bodies of work.
Strengthen their ability to evaluate how material choices affect form, content, process, and meaning.
Practice giving and receiving critique with attention to both conceptual development and material decision-making.
Jan Dickey
Jan Dickey is a painter and curator based in Brooklyn, New York. He holds an MFA in Studio Art from the University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa (2017) and a BFA from the University of Delaware (2009).
Dickey has participated in numerous artist residencies, including TUR telpa (Rīga, Latvia), the Sam and Adele Golden Foundation for the Arts (New Berlin, NY), ARTnSHELTER (Tokyo, Japan), the Kimmel Harding Nelson Center for the Arts (Nebraska City, NE), and the Vermont Studio Center (Johnson, VT). He is currently a resident artist in a two-year studio program at Art Cake in Brooklyn, NY (2024–2026).
His recent solo exhibitions include Summer Creature at Art Cake (Brooklyn, NY), The High Collapse at 5-50 Gallery (Long Island City, NY), The Generations at Bob’s Gallery (Brooklyn, NY), and Passing Through at D. D. D. D. (New York, NY). Dickey has also presented work in group exhibitions across the United States and internationally.
As a curator, Dickey has organized exhibitions for Morgan Lehman Gallery (New York, NY), the Honolulu Museum of Art (Honolulu, HI), and Washington Studio School (Washington, D.C.), among other galleries and institutions. His exhibitions and curatorial projects have been featured in Two Coats of Paint, Arte Fuse, Impulse Magazine, and Art Spiel. Dickey will present a solo exhibition at D. D. D. D. (New York, NY) this October.