Brian Curtis

Brian received his BFA in Painting and a BA in Art History from Southeastern Massachusetts University (now named UMASS Dartmouth) Brian completed his MFA degree in Painting at the University of Houston in Texas. After leaving Houston he spent three years as an Assistant Professor at Hillsdale College in Michigan and one year as a Visiting Assistant professor at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville, Arkansas. Brian left Arkansas to join the faculty at the University of Miami Department of Art and Art History in the fall of 1985 where he currently serves as the coordinator for both the Graduate and Undergraduate Painting and Drawing programs.

For twenty years Brian’s imagery has been consistently evolving toward what can be described as an ambiguous symbolic narrative style. This type of narrative has also been called implicit allegory because of its veiled or plural meanings in contrast to the specificity of traditional allegory. It suggests more than it states and, as such, can be said to be continuing the approach started by the Symbolists in the late 19th century.

By integrating the classical motifs of highly organized, frontally layered space, well-proportioned anatomy, clear definition of form and chiaroscuro Brian’s’ paintings parallel certain Modern themes in their lack of heroic, didactic or historic narrative. These paintings explore the difficult, indistinct, transitional, tentative experience of figures caught between times of activity. This contemporary reintroduction of humanist content is a reflection of Brian’s need to cherish the fragility of human experience. In an age of holocaust, terrorism, and a catastrophic health crisis he feels the need to reestablish common myths and shared experience by monumentalizing the ordinary.

As he continues to develop as a narrative artist he continues to discover that representation gives the painter access to as rich a storehouse of forms and colors as any the human imagination can provide and that traditional ideas about truth and beauty cannot be as easily dismissed as current taste and trends might indicate. The classic elements that are found in Brian’s art are meant to provide both a frame for and point of comparison for contemporary emotional experience by establishing a stable context from which to contemplate the insecurities of our time. In this context my work could be said to be pursuing a reweaving of the ordered beauty and narrative clarity of Giotto with the contemporary cinematic search for the meaning as represented in the works of Kurosawa, Woody Allen, and Ingmar Bergman.

Brian has also produced 50 paintings depicting the neolithic monument of Stonehenge against colorful and dramatic (tropical) skies. Selections from this series have been exhibited in solo exhibitions at Indiana Weslyan University, the Lowe Art Museum, Apex Gallery of the South Dakota School of Mines and Technology at the Vandiver Gallery, The South Carolina School for the Arts.

In early spring of 2026 Brian will be releasing the fourth and final edition of his best-selling perceptual drawing textbook, Drawing from Observation 4e. New to this edition is greatly improved print and paper quality in addition to two uniquely innovative chapters on drawing the human figure, 72 new master works, 32 new technical illustrations, and 75 new high-quality student projects. The first added chapter is art historical in nature and outlines the broad cultural contexts in which the unclothed human figure has appeared throughout history starting in the Paleolithic Era right up through the postmodern period. The second new chapter provides innovative hands-on lessons that build upon and expand all the perception-based drawing lessons that made the earlier editions of Drawing from Observationa long-running best sellers among perceptual drawing books.

Drawing from Observation has been positively reviewed in professional art journals (SGC) (FATE). The second edition, published by McGraw-Hill Higher Education in 2010, included an additional chapter on compositional dynamics, 100 new student drawings, 93 new technical illustrations, and 25 new master work images. The first edition was first published by McGraw-Hill Higher Education in 2001. All three editions are generously illustrated with student drawings from UM's ART 101, Introduction to Perceptual Drawing course.

In early 2015 his book was translated into Portuguese and published out of Sao Paolo, Brazil. In 2006 Drawing from Observation had been translated into Short-Form Chinese and published by McGraw-Hill out of Singapore. All together the various editions and translations have sold over 50,000 original copies.

Over the past twenty-five years Brian has also been an active participant at national art conferences presenting nineteen panel papers on a variety of art topics as well as chairing five conference panels.

In May of 2015 Brian was nominated for a second time for the FATE Master Educator Award after having previously been nominated in 2011. In 1999 Brian was awarded the Arts and Sciences Dean's Excellence in Teaching Award. Brian was also nominated for the University Excellence in Teaching Award in 1999, 2000, and 2003.