Abstract Painting: Sonic Gesture

This 4-week course provides a focused exploration of key movements and concepts in Oil and Acrylic painting, examining the dynamic relationship between abstraction color, sound, and representation. We will delve into Color Field painting and Abstract Expressionism, considering their historical contexts and formal qualities. We will also investigate the connections between music and abstract art and finally, explore contemporary overlaps to representation in dialogue with abstraction. Through lectures, discussions, studio projects, and critiques, students will develop their painting skills and conceptual understanding within these areas.

 Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Identify the core characteristics of Color Field painting and Abstract Expressionism.
• Understand fundamental concepts related to abstract art and its historical development.
• Explore the relationship between musical ideas and visual abstraction in their own work.
• Experiment with ways to incorporate or reference representation within a contemporary painting practice.
• Develop their technical painting skills, including color, application, and composition.
• Articulate their artistic intentions and engage in constructive critique.
• Produce a focused body of work that reflects their exploration of the course themes.

Classes Breakdown: 

Week 1: Foundations — Color, Music, and the Non-Representational

• Introduction to Abstract Art & Musical Concepts in Painting
• Welcome, syllabus overview, introductions, and historical context lecture on Abstract Expressionism and Color Field painting.
• Studio Activity: Create a series of color studies inspired by different music samples. Focus on gesture, color emotion, and rhythm.

Week 2: Gesture and Emotion — Abstract Expressionism and Sonic Motion

• The Body in Painting: Translating Sound to Gesture
• Lecture and visual analysis of works by Pollock, de Kooning, Norman Lewis.
• Movement warm-up: drawing to music (using charcoal, large paper).
• Studio Activity: Large-format painting using gestural abstraction. Students choose one of their selected songs and create a response using expressive brushwork and rhythm.

Week 3: Representation in Dialogue with Abstraction

• Reintroducing the Image — Fragmentation, Suggestion, and Contrast
• Lecture/discussion on contemporary painters who blur abstraction and representation.
• Critique of previous week’s paintings.
• Studio Activity: Begin a painting that incorporates representational imagery (figure, object, memory, or place) into an abstract field.

Week 4: Final Refinement, Critique, and Cohesion

• Developing a Body of Work and Articulating Intention
• Group discussion: What does your painting “sound” like now?
• Open studio to complete or refine a series of 2–3 small works or 1 larger piece.
• Final Critique: Each student presents work and explains the musical/visual concepts explored.

About the instructor: 

José Delgado Zúñiga was born in Ventura, CA, in 1988 and moved to Miami in 2021 and is currently a Studio Resident at Oolite Arts.  He holds an MFA from Columbia University and has been awarded the Rema Hort Mann Emerging Artist Grant, the Rema Hort Mann Artist Community Engagement Grant, and the Robert Gamblin Fellowship. 

He worked as an Adjunct Faculty member at Columbia University School of the Arts in New York City from 2017 to 2021 and served as the Lead Teaching Artist and Muralist at Groundswell in Brooklyn, NY, from 2017 to 2020. 

His work is included in the collections the Marquez Art Projects Foundation, Miami, the Hessel Museum of Art, Bard College, Annandale-on-Hudson, and The Institute of Contemporary Art Miami, among other prominent collections.

Delgado Zuñiga has exhibited his work in group and solo exhibitions at the Marquez Art Projects Foundation, the Yale Divinity School of Sacred Music, New Haven, CT; Museum of Ventura County, Ventura, CA; Otis College of Art and Design, Los Angeles, CA; and in Bronx Calling: The 5th AIM Bronx Biennial, Bronx Museum of the Arts, Bronx, NY; Figure Fire Fantasy, at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Miami, Miami, FL; The Frost Art Museum, Florida, CENTRAL SOUNDS at Luhring Augustine Gallery, Chelsea, CENTRAL FINE, Miami Beach, FL; among others.