Last updated on September 23, 2024
By: Dia Hejny
Writer
Professor Emmet Duggan is a new art teacher here at VolState. He teaches Intro to Art, Drawing, and Foundations and classes at Nashville State and the University of Arkansas. Besides being an art teacher, he is a diehard New York Yankees fan who loves watching baseball, has two dogs, and loves a good old steak burrito from Chipotle.
His favorite art mediums are oils and gouache, which can be found in his colorful bird paintings on his Instagram. He said he paints these birds instead of realistic human portraits because “people don’t need to know the birds to appreciate them, the birds … they are easier to understand as portraits of people you might know.”
One of his most notable achievements is the massive realistic painting of a man with a beard exhibited in Boston’s University Museum. Inspired by Chuck Close’s 1968 painting, he spent six months, 40 hours a week, to create the painting.
He said his advice for people wanting to pursue art would be, “If you love it, you will never work a day in your life. If you are not genuinely interested in it, it is not for you because the main thing that makes you a success as an artist is having a genuine interest that you share with lots of other people.” He also points out it is never too early to get your work out there. You can start an Instagram account and display your work as a student. While art is predominantly a self-driven business, there are ways to work for someone else, like being a studio assistant. This is how he got to work with some of his heroes, including Chuck Close, whose painting inspired him to become an artist.
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