"My teaching is my way of returning some of what I have learned – of giving something back to the idea of artistic endeavor,” says Jeremy Angier, who will be teaching Figure Drawing at the Arlington Center for the Arts this fall. “I enjoy being able to help people understand the figure or to see the figure through fresh eyes.”
Angier, who is joining ACA this semester for the first time, has had a lifelong interest in the arts. He has been the recipient of numerous awards and recognitions over the course of his artistic career, including the Vermont Studio Center Residency Grant and Prince of Wales Fellowship, and has been exhibiting his work, not only in figure drawing but in sculpture and video production as well, as far back as 1990. “I’ve always been an artist,” he notes. “I was drawing from a very early age.”
“I decided to study the figure because I reached a point in my art where I realized that without some kind of figurative training, I would be limited in my understanding of traditional Western art,” he says. “I started at the Art Students League and went on to study figurative sculpture at the New York Academy of Art. I teach figure drawing because I think that all artistic training needs a grounding in figurative drawing and understanding. That’s not to say I think we should all be academic artists. But the academic training as practiced by artists…provides a solid basis from which to explore other approaches to making art – whatever that might be for the individual.”
“Figure Drawing,” running for 8 Thursdays from 9:30 AM – 12:30 PM at ACA, will do just that – providing students with a solid basis in representational drawing, so that they can take their art into new and exciting territory. “Representational drawing is the direct depiction of what you observe – it’s just you and the subject – whether still life, landscape or the figure, you are recording your immediate response to what you see,” Angier notes. “With the most minimal means – a pencil – you can make the most expressive representation.”
And Angier is thrilled to help push students past their creative limitations. “In my figure drawing class, I hope to give the student some new tools to use in representational drawing – or indeed in any artistic practice,” he notes. “By focusing on a specific aspect of figurative understanding, such as the idea of contour, or the concept of volume, I hope that students will gain a better understanding of how the figure has been represented in art since the Greeks. What particular ideas about the figure have led artists in the West to depict it in any particular way? And how the student can take those ideas and use them in their own work, whatever that may be.”
He is particularly excited to work with a community arts center like ACA. “I find that people who come to community arts centers, especially to draw the figure, are very interested in and devoted to their art,” Angier says. “They’re doing it because they really want to be there. I’m looking forward to meeting people in the ACA community. As a first-time teacher here, I’ll be interested to see how things are done and what students expectations are – and I hope I can live up to the high standards of teaching at ACA.”
When asked why he considered art to be important in his life, he was quick to note” “Picasso said, ‘If I knew what art is, I would keep my knowledge to myself.’”
Indeed. We hope you can join Jeremy for his creative drawing class this fall – we can’t wait to see what you create! For more info or to register, visit www.acarts.org.
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