Author: Ms. Abigail Teska

Many people wish they could make beautiful things. However, people acknowledge that being an artist is an undeniably vulnerable task that requires truthfulness of expression and, as artist Henri Matisse proposes, takes courage. In the post, Miss Teska explores how prioritizing the arts in classical education can lead students to recognize beauty in their daily lives and orient their actions toward good. Practicing the virtue of friendship, or seeking virtue together, is essential to this end. Miss Teska offers some suggestions for how to cultivate the virtue of friendship in the art classroom.

As young aspiring artists, students often ask questions like, "How can I make this look real?" because they measure their success and growth in art based on how realistically they captured the subject of their piece. In this post, Miss Teska explains how the seventh-grade art curriculum continuously explores art that moves toward abstraction and away from realism, offering an opportunity for students to witness new art styles and begin to curate a style of their own.

In this post, Master Teacher Miss Teska explains the importance of teaching students to observe closely and think critically as tools for distinguishing what is good and beautiful in their lives. The post outlines a method for engaging in a perceptual, creative exercise to strengthen observation and discover more about an artist.

Did you know that being an enduring artist, persevering with steady effort and good cheer through artistic challenges, can lead to becoming a genius? In this blog post, Master Teacher Miss Teska explains how her upper school art students discovered this through practicing the virtue of perseverance and studying Albrecht Dürer’s artwork, Melencolia I.