Surrealist Still Life: Painting the Impossible

This course invites students to create a single surrealist painting developed over four sessions, moving from direct observation toward imaginative transformation. Grounded in the traditions of Surrealism, students will explore how color, material, and form can shift the familiar into the uncanny.

Working from a still life arrangement, participants will begin by establishing structure, light, and color relationships through careful observation. Through guided demonstrations and Surrealist exercises such as automatic drawing and object transformation, students will gradually disrupt and reimagine their compositions. Emphasis will be placed on color as a psychological force, layering techniques such as glazing and scumbling, and the expressive potential of paint handling.

Rather than producing multiple studies, students will focus on developing one sustained painting, allowing the image to evolve through revision, distortion, and material exploration. This extended process encourages deeper engagement with composition, surface, and imagination.

Open to all levels, this workshop provides both technical instruction and conceptual tools to help artists expand their visual language and create paintings that move beyond representation into dream, memory, and invention.

Class Breakdown

Class 1: Observation and Foundation

• Introduction to Surrealist painting and its relationship to observation
• Demonstration on color mixing and paint application
• Automatic drawing and surrealist warm-up exercises (sketchbook)
• Blocking in the painting using thin, flexible paint layers

Class 2: Disruption and Transformation

• Demonstration on color transformation and layering
• Strategies for altering scale, form, and spatial logic
• Individual guidance on developing surrealist imagery
• Continued development of the same painting

Class 3: Material Development and Depth

• Demonstration on glazing, impasto, and edge control
• Techniques for creating atmosphere and depth
• Individual feedback focused on strengthening color and structure
• Continued development of the same painting

Class 4: Resolution and Completion

• Demonstration on finishing techniques and surface unity
• Final color adjustments and compositional refinement
• Individual feedback and guidance
• Group critique and discussion

Materials not included; you will receive the list of supplies upon registration.

About the instructor: 

José Delgado Zúñiga was born in Ventura, CA, in 1988 and moved to Miami in 2021. 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 Zúñiga 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.