Critical Explorations with Tom Csaszar

Critical Explorations with Tom Csaszar: The Directness of Visual Art 

This workshop will explore how to see the richness of your visual works, in paintings, watercolors, or other visual medias which could include sculpture, animation, collage, photography, and digital images. The expansive focuses and experiences of your works can be explored through the relations between your works and the considered responses of other viewers in this class. In this class we will explore these aspects of our works. First, by looking at and discussing three to five works each person brings in, and second by making works in the studio to continue developing our insights into these works. 

This class provides the opportunity to explore the accomplishment and mastery of works we have previously made and how these can lead to the next works that we make—whether the next works are sketches for further development or a more complete realization of connections to the experience of the previous works. 

The power and relevance of a visual work—emotionally, narratively, and in terms of visual interest—resides in the structure of the image, the elements and episodes of the work in relation to each other and the whole image. We will address this in our discussions of the works and the studio practice of making works in a specific visual media.

Each participant should bring in three to five works for us to view, experience, and discuss in the first section of the class. And each artist should bring a medium to work with in the second portion of the class as we develop new works in the studio. Ideal for artists of all levels in all media including oil, acrylic, watercolor, and gouache.

If time permits, we will also look at the works in the Cerulean Galleries to explore how they are relevant to our works.

View/download the Materials/Information Sheet
View/download the Cerulean Arts Class & Policy Guide

Date:  Saturday, February 21, 2026
Time:  10 a.m. - 4 p.m. 
Fee:  $95 
Register by:  February 13 (space is limited)
** Sign up with a friend and receive 10% off both registrations.  Use discount code ClassWinter26 at checkout. 

An artist, writer, and lecturer based in Philadelphia, Tom Csaszar has been on the graduate faculties of the University of the Arts and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts for over twenty years. He has written numerous pieces over the last twenty-six years for The Journal of Art, Artnews, Art in America, American Crafts, The New Art Examiner, Sculpture, Title Magazine.com, Artcritical.com and various gallery catalogues. His paintings have been shown regionally and locally for over thirty-five years. A Contributing Editor of The New Art Examiner from 1993 - 2001, he is a member of the International Association of Art Critics, and the College Art Association. He has developed and taught seminars in graduate programs at the University of the Arts and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts since 2000.