Artist Virtual Consultation or Critique

Artist Virtual Consultation or Critique on Zoom

The purpose of this program is to critique an artist’s work, generate conversation, and elicit queries, suggestions or consultation.

The Painting Center is hosting an Artist Virtual Consultation or Critique for artists on Zoom every month. A team of two gallery members, including some current and former faculty members from colleges and universities, will work with an artist for one hour and fifteen minutes during a scheduled evening.  

The fee is $125.00 for the critique. We offer a sliding scale fee for artists who cannot afford this cost.

To apply, artists must send five JPEG images of paintings, relevant drawings, or studies, and an explanation of what they hope to accomplish. Upon acceptance, a date and time will be scheduled, and the fee will be collected. 

After acceptance, please prepare a slideshow of up to 20 images, a brief statement about the work in the portfolio, and a list of questions, concerns, or ambitions you would like to address during the critique. 

Critics

Sue Havens holds an MFA in Painting from the prestigious Milton Avery Graduate School of the Arts at Bard College and a BFA in Studio Art from The Cooper Union in New York City. With over two decades of teaching experience at the university level, she currently serves as an Associate Professor of Art at the University of South Florida, where she has taught a wide range of courses including Intermediate and Advanced Painting and Drawing, Figure Drawing, and Senior Thesis. Her teaching background also includes positions at Montclair State University, Pratt Institute, and the Massachusetts College of Art and Design. Sue brings both rigorous academic training and a deep passion for the studio arts to every class she teaches.

Gerri Rachins (b. 1955, Brookline, Massachusetts) is an American artist who lives and works in Boston and on Cape Cod. She taught in Boston for more than twenty years at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts University and served on the faculty of Massachusetts College of Art and Design for over a decade. Rachins studied at the New York Studio School and earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts from the Philadelphia College of Art. She received a Master of Fine Arts from Massachusetts College of Art and Design in 2001, where she focused on painting, drawing, and printmaking. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections throughout the United States, including the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Massachusetts; the Danforth Art Museum, Framingham, Massachusetts; the Zillman Art Museum, Bangor, Maine. Rachins is represented in New York by The Painting Center, where she presented her fourth solo exhibition in 2025, Getting From One Place to Another: Recent Paintings by Gerri Rachins. She is also represented in the Boston area by Mobilia Gallery, which marked their long-standing relationship with a twenty-year retrospective in 2022. Her work is represented by Mobilia Gallery in Cambridge, Massachusetts. During the summer of 2026, the Zillman Art Museum at the University of Maine will present a solo exhibition titled Gerri Rachins: Selected Works On Paper, 2008 – 2025.

Christopher Schade holds an MFA in Painting and Printmaking from Yale University School of Art and a BAA in Painting and Plan II Honors Humanities from The University of Texas at Austin. With three decades of teaching experience at the university level, he currently serves as an Associate Professor of Art at the University of Massachusetts Boston, where he has taught a wide range of courses including Beginning through Advanced Painting and Drawing, Figure Drawing, and Studio Art Capstone. His teaching experience also includes positions at Montclair State University, Hudson County Community College, Austin Community College, The University of Texas at Austin and Dartmouth College. In addition to his love of teaching, he has extensive experience critiquing and has been a visiting artist or critic at Francisco de Vitoria University, School of Visual Arts, New Hampshire Institute of Art, Rhode Island School of Design and Boston University.

Andrea Kantrowitz holds an EdD in Art Education and Cognitive Studies from Columbia University Teachers College, an MFA in Painting from Yale University, and a BA in Art and Cognition from Harvard University. She currently serves as Associate Professor and Director of the Art Education Program at the State University of New York at New Paltz, where her teaching spans art education and the cognitive dimensions of artistic practice. Her teaching background includes foundation drawing at Pratt Institute and graduate courses in contemporary art at the College of New Rochelle, and she spent many years as a teaching artist in the New York City public schools. As director of the Thinking through Drawing Project, she co-organized a decade of international drawing and cognition research symposia and workshops with collaborators from around the world. Her 2022 book Drawing Thought, published by MIT Press, distills her research on how drawing functions as a tool of observation, discovery, and invention.

Dale Emmart attended The Cooper Union for a BFA in printmaking and drawing, and RISD for an MFA in painting. She works as a painter, printmaker, paper and book artist. For nearly forty years, she has been an educator at RISD, The Parsons School of Design, Fordham University, New York Institute of Technology, Brooklyn College, and independent schools in New York City. She served as Department Head of Art at The Brearley School for many years and currently directs Plein Air Portugal, a landscape painting program for artists in northern Portugal. She has taught summer programs for Parsons in Paris, Arts Pro Tem in Scotland, and The Pont Aven School of Art in Brittany, France. She received a NYFA grant in Painting, a grant for the Dieu Donne Papermill Workspace, and residencies at The MacDowell Colony and at The Virginia Center for the Creative Arts. She is working on a Certificate in Bookmaking through the Center of Book Arts and is active in the CRP (Critical Response Practice) program. 

Testimonials

“I would unreservedly recommend the artist critique recently offered by The Painting Center. The 75 minutes that I spent with Sue Havens and Dale Emmart affirmed the seriousness of my work and made me feel truly seen. They also pointed out very specific passages within each work that were either unintentional or simply left unfinished or filled in. I did not disagree. Their lifelong experience and, most important, their passion and love for painting was inspirational.”

“Thank you! It was very helpful and I had a good experience.”

“Big recommendation for fellow painters: @thepaintingcenter's Art File is worth applying to, it gives your work visibility with curators in Chelsea. They also offer a virtual artist critique, which I can't say enough about. I had mine with @daleemmart and @suehavens, two great painters who are also generous and perceptive. They helped me see things in my older work I'd been overlooking and gave me real clarity when I was at a crossroads. It's affordable, it's serious, and it left me feeling both challenged and encouraged. Do it."