Understanding art as experience through painting

John Dewey’s ([1934] 2005) Art as Experience, and Maxine Greene’s (2001), Variations on a Blue Guitar, are seminal texts of art education. I experienced my own comprehension of these classics through reading as well as my own art-making process. Working through tension and resistance, and arriving at a synthesis with my own ideas, I gained a depth of understanding at which I could not have arrived without also experiencing and learning through the process of painting. This visual essay provides a glimpse into the act of art-making as an emergent and integral part of the learning process to inform how art education students may reach a fulfilling conclusion to integrating foundational texts with their work as art educators in order to open a world of possibilities for their students.