Fine Arts

Our ambition is very simple - to make Cardiff School of Art & Design one of the best places in the country to study Fine Art. We do this by offering a challenging curriculum founded on principles British art schools have fostered over decades: imaginative thinking, critical awareness, sound technical knowledge, and a deep understanding of art history. We strongly encourage students to develop their drawing skills, working from life and the model, to gain lasting proficiency with tools, materials and processes, and study significant artworks as a source of inspiration and guide to excellence. Working in our city-centre studios and having access to a superb historical collection at the National Museum, our students are not only immersed in a rich contemporary art scene but have intimate contact with great artists of the past.

We embrace new creative opportunities - new technologies, new media hybrids and interdisciplinary practices. We are aware that the art of the future, whatever it looks like, will be different from the art of the present or the past. Our students are the artists of the future, and we encourage them to break moulds, to look afresh at what is possible, at what art can do or say. Using technologies like robotics, the internet, or interventionist practices like walking or social engagement, by combining painting with performance or sculpture with sound, new artists will continue to surprise, excite and confound their audiences, and continually reinvigorate their discipline.

Our teaching and technical staff are passionate about what we and our students do. All our tutors are practicing artists, theorists or writers who use their knowledge and experience to nurture new talent and promote the next generation of creative practitioners. Our technical staff are closely involved in helping students with practical issues of process, craft and material manipulation. We have generously appointed studio spaces, and technical resources covering a huge range of media. All this helps provide an art education of the highest quality and to best prepare students for success in whatever career they pursue.

If you are hard working, ambitious and determined we would like to develop your talents and help fulfil your aspirations. There are few things more rewarding than seeing our former students succeed, and we hope you will be one of them.

Robert Pepperell Reader in Fine Art Head of Fine Arts