We are excited to present this unique opportunity to work in small, focused pods while receiving individual mentorship with artist Hannah Beerman. Designed for artists interested in expanding their experimental practices, this course creates a space where curiosity, risk, and commitment intersect — encouraging participants to push beyond habitual approaches and enter deeper dialogue with materials, ideas, and process.

At its core, this program explores painting as a site of investigation: a place where failure, surprise, play, and rigor coexist. Together, we will engage with the generosity of making — exploring boundaries, questioning assumptions, and investigating what it means to work as artists in relation to ourselves, our communities, and the broader world.

Participants will be encouraged to embrace uncertainty and cultivate resilience within their studio practice. The course makes room for unpredictability, experimentation, and discovery — recognizing that meaningful growth often emerges from risk.

Course Structure

Participants will be organized into small pods of approximately three artists (final structure to be confirmed). These pods create an intimate and supportive environment for sustained dialogue, critical feedback, and shared inquiry.

Each session will include:

• Artist presentations and group critiques

• Discussions around form, content, and context

• Material investigations and process-based conversations

• Critical dialogue focused on experimentation and development

In addition to pod meetings, participants will receive dedicated one-on-one mentorship with Hannah Beerman, offering personalized guidance tailored to individual practices, questions, and goals.

Studio Focus

We will zoom in on both macro and micro aspects of painting practice — from the technical and material specifics (brushwork, surface, scale, and paint composition) to broader conceptual questions surrounding risk, playfulness, vulnerability, and intention in the work.

Areas of exploration may include:

• Experimental approaches to materials and surface

• Process-based methodologies

• Strategies for navigating uncertainty and failure

• Developing sustainable experimental practices

• Expanding personal visual language

Reading, Writing, and Research

Throughout the course, participants will engage with a diverse range of texts, including:

• Theory (including Audre Lorde)

• Poetry (including Fanny Howe)

• Artist manifestos (such as Claes Oldenburg)

• Artist diaries and reflections (including Anne Truitt and Alice Neel)

Participants are encouraged — though not required — to develop an independent writing practice reflecting on their own work and process. Writing will function as a supplemental tool for reflection and experimentation.

Guest Visitors

Guest visitors include:

• Painter Dona Nelson

• Kristen Smoragiewicz, Senior Director at Anton Kern Gallery

Guest sessions will offer additional perspectives on contemporary painting practices and professional development within the art world.

Who This Course Is For

This program is ideal for artists seeking:

• Greater risk and experimentation in their practice

• Rigorous yet supportive critique environments

• Expanded conceptual and material approaches to painting

• Meaningful dialogue with peers and mentors

No guts, no glory.

Hannah Beerman’s themes in her mixed-media paintings include play, loss, survival and desire, including wigs, clothing, food, collage, and more found objects in her work. Beerman’s paintings have been exhibited at the Brooklyn Museum, Anton Kern Gallery, Fredericks and Freiser, Kapp Kapp, Duck Creek and Stowaway, among many others. She has lectured at The Cooper Union, RISD, NYU, Cornell, School of Art Institute of Chicago and more. She is a recipient of a MacDowell Fellowship. She earned her BA in Studio Arts at Bard College and her MFA in Painting from Hunter College. Her recent two-person show at the Thomas Erben Gallery was on display through December of 2025. Her work has been featured and reviewed in The Brooklyn Rail, Bomb, Interview, The Observer, and more. She was included in Cultured Mag’s 2025 Young Artists List. She lives and works in Brooklyn. hannahbeerman.com

Dona Nelson moved to New York City in 1967 to participate in the Whitney Independent Study Program. She received her BFA from Ohio State University in 1968.
She has participated in the 2014 Whitney Biennial and in group shows at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Art Gallery of New South Wales, Rose Art Museum, Contemporary Art Museum Houston and South Florida, Boston University Art Gallery, New York University 80WSE, CCS Bard, MIT List Visual Art Center, Apexart, Milwaukee Art Museum, P.S. 1, Aldrich Contemporary Art Museum, and Guggenheim. Nelson has received many grants and awards including an Anonymous Was A Woman Grant in 2015, an Artist Legacy Foundation Award in 2013, a Foundation for Contemporary Arts Award in 2011, and a Guggenheim Memorial Fellowship in 1994.
Espace Tajan exhibited Nelson’s paintings in Paris in the fall of 2019, adding to a long list of widely reviewed solo shows at galleries such as Michael Benevento (Los Angeles), Cheim & Read, Michael Klein, and Rosa Esman (all New York); including a mid-career solo exhibition at the Weatherspoon Art Museum, Greensboro, NC, which was accompanied by a full color catalogue. Her paintings have been included in group shows at Thaddaeus Ropac, London, Morán Morán, Los Angeles, Ceysson & Bénétière, Luxembourg, as well as Deitch Projects, Lisson Gallery, Robert Miller, Mary Boone, Canada Gallery and d’Amelio Terras(all New York). Nelson’s work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, Guggenheim Museum, Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Rose Art Museum, Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Perez Art Museum, Kadist Foundation, Weatherspoon Art Museum, Albright-Knox and Art Gallery of New South Wales, Australia. Nelson’s work is currently part of Taking Space: Contemporary Women Artists and the Politics of Scale at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Philadelphia, and Never Done: 100 Years of Women in Politics and Beyond at the Tang Teaching Museum, Skidmore College, Saratoga Springs, NY. Her work will also be included in 52 Womxm Artists: Revisiting a Feminist Milestone at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, CT, scheduled to open in June of 2022.

Kristen Smoragiewicz is Senior Director at the New York gallery Anton Kern Gallery, where she works closely with artists, collectors, and institutions while helping shape the gallery’s exhibition program and presence at major art fairs.
In addition to her role as a dealer, Smoragiewicz has curated exhibitions and special projects, including presentations at events such as SPRING/BREAK Art Show, where she organized artist-focused installations highlighting emerging and mid-career practices.
Her curatorial work often explores contemporary painting, sculpture, and interdisciplinary practices, bringing together artists whose work engages with material experimentation, identity, and cultural narratives. She has also collaborated on exhibitions such as Peep Show at Anton Kern Gallery’s WINDOW project space.
Through her roles as curator, advisor, and gallery director, Smoragiewicz has been involved in the development and presentation of numerous contemporary artists within the New York art scene and international art market.