The BFA in Art: Painting offers professional, studio-based training in the visual arts with all the advantages of a university education.

The BFA is a professional degree with concentrated areas of specialization, so students will take more art courses than in a BA program. At UMass Dartmouth, they also have the advantages of a university education to diversify studies and expand career opportunities.

Students will develop cross-disciplinary sensitivity—with the possibility of combining painting with printmaking, photography, digital media, textiles, and other disciplines in contemporary art making. They will also be able to explore fields across the university, such as business, engineering, and science.

Fine artists are inherent problem-solvers, negotiators, collaborators, and team-players; they have excellent hand/eye coordination and can illustrate their ideas—often quickly—so that others can understand a concept beyond the written or spoken word. The skills of a fine artist can be applied in education, business, advertising, set design, and arts management (gallery directors, administrators), to name a few.

Painting students use university resources to cross-disciplinary sensitivity that addresses: representation; mixed media; abstraction; processes in drawing and painting; and the possibility of combining printmaking, painting, photography, digital and time-based media, textiles and other disciplines in contemporary art making. Faculty-led field trips to regional and metropolitan art venues, a visiting artist program, opportunities for study abroad, and regular exposure to exhibitions in College Galleries enhance the studio-based study. Painting students participate in numerous exhibitions of their work throughout their education that culminates in a Capstone BFA Exhibition in a museum or gallery setting.