“In a sense, the whole world around the artist is his source… Anything can be a source, even a mistake. The sorcery or the thievery is the art of relating sources to a new solution.”
— Sister Corita Kent
Mondays, June 29—July 27
Class will meet via Zoom
Mondays from 7-9 PM ET
All levels and mediums welcome.
Course Tuition: $450.00
Payment may be made via Venmo or Zelle
To register or ask questions, email: jennifer@jennifersullivan.org
Starting from Source: Finding New Meaning in Familiar Forms is a 5-week online course for anyone interested in using source material as a creative tool.
Through presentations, discussions, and creative exercises, we’ll explore the creative process as a relationship and experiment with techniques for transforming existing objects, images, artworks, films, memories, and found materials into something personal and new.
Artists have always worked from what already exists—looking at other artists, retelling stories, and reinterpreting familiar images to make something new. In this course, we will use source material as both a starting point and a companion: something to respond to, transform, question, or reimagine.
Working from a source is not about copying, but about departure. Beginning from something helps ground the process and opens up possibilities beyond the pressure of starting from nothing. Through drawing, painting, and discussion, we will explore how meaning can emerge through observation, invention, and play.
This course draws on my experience as a painter and professor, working with source material in many ways—through interpretation, transformation, and critique.
About the instructor:
Jennifer Sullivan is a painter and educator based in Ridgewood, Queens. Her work explores personal narratives through a combination of observation and invention, drawing on mythology, film, music, and other source materials as points of departure. Source images are inhabited much like an actor inhabits a role, becoming vehicles for new meanings and personal expression.
Jennifer has taught studio art for over twelve years at New York University, Queens College (CUNY), Parsons School of Design, SUNY Old Westbury, Ox-Bow School of Art, and Maharishi International University. She holds an MFA in Fine Art from Parsons School of Design and a BFA from Pratt Institute.
Recent exhibitions include The Tenderness (with Raychael Stine, Emma Gray HQ, 2024) and Sleeper (Turn Gallery, 2021). Her work has been featured in The New York Times and The Brooklyn Rail.