It’s been a more than a decade since my youngest graduated from high school, and I still approach this last week of summer with mixed feelings. I love teaching, but could never have survived in an American school.
“Good teaching,” wrote Mary Townsend, “is somewhat ineffable. There is no rule or measure that will be fully predictive of who will be good at it, or what methods they will follow to do their best work; you have to know it when you see it, within a long human chain of teachers as unbroken as possible; and the fact of the matter is, there will never be enough good teachers to go around. In this way, some of humanity’s perpetual frustration with school becomes more understandable; for even at school’s best, you still might not get to go, and so be forced to take your ambition elsewhere after all.”
Adult art education requires us to be beginners again
Adults come to art classes with something children don’t have: a lifetime of experience.
That’s a tremendous advantage. You’ve traveled, raised families, learned complex skills in other areas, solved problems, experienced death and loss and accumulated a vast mental library of images. Of course, there’s also a downside; you’ve also accumulated a lifetime of opinions about what is and isn’t possible. I hear these all the time:
“I can’t draw a straight line.”
“I’m no good at color-matching.”
“My hands aren’t steady enough.”
“I don’t have innovative ideas.”
No child ever says those things, but they’re the enemy of adult art education. Learning to paint requires the willingness to continuously recast ourselves as beginners, free of any expectations about what the process of learning should look like.
Kids expect to not know things. Adult learners are always embarrassed by what they don’t know. It’s very hard for us to start a new project with a complete willingness to screw up. That, my friends, requires courage.
The power of positive criticism
My art teachers were excellent at separating the wheat from the chaff in my work. I never felt as if I were being personally criticized, but they still managed to impart technique. The best of them saw something nascent in my work and helped me develop it.
Those teachers also never flattered my incompetence by calling it ‘self-expression’. Instead, they gave me grown-up tools and then showed me what to do with them.
Those of us who have been extremely competent in other fields can find being in the middle of the pack a brutal experience. The first time I realized that I wasn’t the best painter in my class was the most eye-opening and sobering of my experiences at art school.
Of course, that’s where my real learning started.
Individual instruction isn’t that helpful
The Wyeths, père et fils, managed to teach their family members to paint one-on-one, but it doesn’t work for most of us. Individual instruction is too often a feedback loop. Other painters’ struggles inform our own. So do their solutions. The group is a critical part of adult art education, but that requires a good class and a good teacher.
Restoring curiosity
When we were children, we looked, wondered, experimented and puttered. Time had little meaning and deadlines really didn’t exist. We didn’t necessarily know what something was supposed to become before we began and we were generally satisfied with what we made, if for no other reason than that we’d made it.
Then adulthood happened, and we became results-driven rather than process-driven.
Painting, done right, has the power to reverse that. Painting is really just a series of mistakes that occasionally work out, after all. You try something, see what happens and then try something else.
This is not an escape from adult life. It is a richer way of inhabiting it, and it’s better for our blood pressure.
I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:
- New! Color Clinic 2026 | Rockport, ME, October 3-4, 2026
- New! Composition Week 2026 | Rockport, ME, October 5-9, 2026
- High-Desert Light & Monumental Form | Sedona, AZ, Apr 26, 2027 – Apr 30, 2027
Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace: