Founders College

Our vision

Traditional higher education focuses on rote memorization of a random set of disconnected facts and opinions. Undergraduate classes are often unrelated, and lack significant content as it relates to the real world.

Founders College takes a fundamentally different approach. The learning experience we offer is based on the integration of a carefully structured core of great ideas. We believe that true understanding comes from making connections, from training your mind to identify great ideas and discoveries, and from understanding how those ideas impact both the individual and entire civilizations.

A Founders education will spark in you a lifelong passion for knowledge and discovery. We work hard to produce extraordinary thinkers – individuals who will make a real difference.

We focus on the great ideas and significant events that have shaped civilizations. Your mind will be prepared with a comprehensive knowledge and deeper understanding of these great ideas, their connections and their consequences. You will enjoy life with a much better understanding of yourself and the world around you. Equipped with the critical thinking and communications skills employers value most, you will be prepared to excel in any profession you choose.


How we are different

Founders is based on a revolutionary idea: A college education should be an integrated, logical whole that trains your mind to think clearly and incisively. The experience should inspire in you a lifelong passion for knowledge. College should not be a hash of disconnected, propaganda-filled courses that are lacking in meaningful content. Most of all, it should not be boring; it should be intellectually challenging and thrilling. Our revolutionary teaching methods and unique, structured curriculum produce a learning experience like no other.


Fine Art Programs

Academy of Art

More than a century ago, the audience of an art show viewed drawings and paintings with a kind of visual literacy that is almost lost today. Those viewers understood principles of fine art that are unknown even to most artists in our contemporary culture. Artists who were trained in the Academies of the 19th century knew the true “secrets of the masters” that have been carefully safeguarded by only a few dozen artist/teachers, and which have never before been available in a liberal arts College program. Now Academy of Art at Founders College has a true ‘classical’ academic fine art program available, with options to suit every art lover.


Your Art Career Starts Here

Open the door to The Academy Gallery and walk through an exhibit of drawings so realistic, they seem to pop out from the walls; still-life paintings of stunning color and believability; and paintings of people and portraits so real they seem to breathe. Many hobby painters and aspiring artists long to achieve this level of realism in their work. Now at Academy of Art at Founders College, anyone can learn to draw and paint in the "old master" manner, following the proven step-by-step program.


Where You Begin

Drawing from the Flat just means that your model is flat-- such as a master's drawing from the history of art. Or one of the famous Bargues, an exercise from a drawing course that has been used to train artists for 150 years.

Your work at this stage will be done in graphite (pencil) and charcoal. You'll explore the style and selectivity of some great masters, while educating your eye and hand to accurate shapes and values (shading).

Even at this early stage of training, your best work may be sale-able, and will often be included in student exhibitions.

Also at the start of the program is Drawing from Life (from the live model). Great figurative art--that is, art focused on the human figure, whether portraits, historic story-telling narratives, or sensual celebrations of beauty--has always depended on thorough training in Life Drawing.

You will begin drawing from the model right away, in all program options.

Beautiful figure drawings appeal to many art collectors, too.


Bachelor of Fine Arts Program

Introduction

The Bachelor of Fine Arts (B.F.A.) is a professional degree program that combines a revolutionary liberal arts core curriculum with an equally revolutionary fine arts curriculum in the old master tradition. The liberal arts core focuses on great ideas and significant events that have shaped civilization. Students acquire comprehensive knowledge and understanding of these ideas, events, and discoveries and their connections and consequences. They learn how art was influenced by these circumstances, and how art impacted history. Through this logically and chronologically structured process, students learn to understand, appreciate and enjoy life with greater awareness of themselves and the world around them.

The fine arts studio course work is modeled on nineteenth-century atelier practices derived from the Renaissance tradition. The rigorous academy-style system stresses draftsmanship and traditional oil painting techniques. Students refine their artistic sensibility, develop the highest level technical skill, and attain the capability to lead successful careers as portraitists, figure artists, animators, illustrators, landscapists, still-life painters and educators.

All Founders faculty are master teachers, most with terminal degrees. Outstanding among the strengths of the program is the critical one-on-one attention given to each student, assuring that important concepts in both branches of the curriculum are understood and internalized. Students also have opportunities to interact with visiting professors and artists from around the world and established artists of note living in the region.

The Academy Gallery, a commercial fine arts gallery owned and managed by Founders College, features the work of students as well as other artists. Students are also encouraged to participate in state and regional art exhibitions.

Founders College is dedicated to offering the best student environment possible for the study and completion of an artist's training. The liberal arts curriculum is taught on the Berry Hill campus and the atelier course work is taught at the downtown campus studio.

Founders College offers many options for degree completion: full-time 4 year program; intensive 3 year program including summer classes and extra-course allowances per semester; extended degree completion over a time period determined by the student.

---

Founders College Art School Location

Other art schools in Virginia

Marymount University The University Mission Marymount University is an independent Catholic university that emphasizes academic excellence at the undergraduate and grad... Address: 2807 N. Glebe Road

Bridgewater College About Us Bridgewater College has led the way for more than 125 years developing leaders in fields such as business, industry, medicine, law, commun... Address: 402 East College Street

University of Richmond (Department of Art and Art History) Studying art and art history at Richmond is distinctive because of the close cooperation between the studio art, art history and University Museums pr... Address: 28 Westhampton Way

Back to: » Art schools in Virginia » Art schools in South Boston

More information: » Marinas » Boats for sale