Painting

Immerse Yourself

The Painting program promotes the medium of painting in its varied manifestations as a fundamental form of artistic expression. Instruction, practice, and awareness of historical and contemporary context are brought together to enable students to think critically and imaginatively, and to express their ideas with skill and conviction.

The principal component of the Painting program is learning through doing. Critical dialogue and rigorous expectations about studio practice support students’ work towards a developing artistic vision.

Degrees Offered

BFA Painting
Degree Type

Undergraduate
The BFA program in Painting recognizes the primacy of painting as a vital mode of contemporary expression. Instruction, independent practice, and awareness of historical and contemporary context are brought together to enable students to think critically and imaginatively, and to express their ideas with skill and conviction.
Formats

In-Person

Availability

Full-Time

Location

On-Campus
MFA Painting
Degree Type

Graduate
BU’s MFA Painting program is studio-driven, with rigorous expectations about each student’s commitment to their own artistic practice. The program supplements this emphasis on the studio with critical dialogue, in the form of studio visits, critiques, weekly seminars, lectures, field trips, and workshops.
Formats

In-Person

Availability

Full-Time

Location

On-Campus

Featured Faculty

In a modern gallery space, a bearded man wearing glasses, a brown blazer, and jeans points to and discusses artwork displayed on white walls. Several visitors—seen from behind—observe the exhibition, which includes photographs and mixed-media pieces. The geometric floor features tan and dark tones, and natural light illuminates the contemporary art installation.

CREATIVES IN PRACTICE: MARC SCHEPENS

In the summer of 2026, BU School of Visual Arts Director Marc Schepens exhibited his work at the group exhibition 42 at the David Shelton Gallery in Houston, Texas. Curated by Jeremy DePrez and Dana Frankfort, the exhibition explored abstraction not as a style, but as a way of thinking that organizes information, tests relationships, and shapes meaning.

Schepens’ exhibited work Untitled (April 3, 2024) is part of an ongoing family of paintings begun in 2018–19. For Schepens, the paintings serve as markers of his presence. “Each canvas is titled with the day it was completed, operating as a literal, existential journal that declares: I was here on this day, observing the world around me,” says Schepens. “This systematic tracking of time speaks to art’s phenomenological and perceptual powers, a durational encounter between my body, the canvas, and the passage of time itself.”