As artificial intelligence reshapes industries and automation absorbs repetitive work, creativity has become one of the few skills machines still struggle to replicate authentically. Colleges across the United States are responding by expanding art programs, investing in interdisciplinary creative spaces, and encouraging students to combine artistic talent with entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation. Rhode Island School […]
Born in China and now based in New York City, Shuyao Huang approaches painting less as a pursuit of outcomes and more as a daily necessity. What began as an ambition to study fashion design shifted after arriving in New York, where teachers encouraged her toward fine art. At Pratt Institute, Huang developed both a
Mason Dowling approaches painting like a risk. Not in theory, but in practice, where each move has the potential to undo everything that came before it. There is no fixed image he is working toward, no clean endpoint. The work is built through a series of decisions that could just as easily collapse the painting
There’s a moment in talking to Noel W. Anderson where everything shifts from art as object to art as something closer to confession. Not performance, not presentation, but release. For him, making work isn’t about building toward a career milestone or chasing validation. It’s about leaving something behind so it doesn’t follow you. Something you
Björn Heyn does not describe his studio as a workplace. He calls it a playground. For him, that distinction matters. Being an artist, he explains, means holding on to a particular state of mind that can easily disappear in adulthood. Bills arrive, emails pile up, the mailbox fills with responsibilities that feel far removed from
Ranny Macdonald describes painting as a threshold experience, a place where something begins to take over. “I get a sort of rush from it,” he says, “to be on that threshold… it feels like something else is kind of taking over, you know what needs to be done and you’re listening.” In those moments, the
In the studio, drawing and painting are the moments when Henry Ward feels most fully himself, even as he admits that the act of making art can feel heavy and unavoidable. He describes it as a compulsion that remains inseparable from how he understands himself and the world. If he could choose not to make
Art school teaches you technique, composition, and craft—it shows you how to make work. What it rarely teaches is how to talk about your work, build a consistent practice, or keep creating once the structure disappears. For many artists, graduation marks the beginning of a quieter, more difficult phase of their practice — one without
For Ruben Tönnis, art is not just a practice but a way of structuring life itself. Living and working in Berlin, painting gives him a sense of purpose and aliveness. A day spent making art, he says, is always better than one without it. What began as a hobby eventually became the center of his
Marie Amélie Chéreau return to art came after a life that had been deliberately built away from it, shaped by discipline, expectation, and success in a world where becoming an artist was never considered a viable path. What makes her story resonate is not only the transformation itself, but the depth of time that passed
