TEACHING AND MAKING ARE ONE CONTINUOUS LOOP FOR ME. THE CLASSROOM FEEDS THE STUDIO, AND THE STUDIO FUELS THE CLASSROOM.

Introduction

Jesse Payne is an American artist and educator whose work investigates the evolving relationship between observation, process, and transformation. Working primarily in painting and drawing, Payne explores how images emerge, fracture, and rebuild through time and iteration. His practice sits at the intersection of experimentation and discipline — merging the immediacy of gesture with the precision of structure.

Across his recent bodies of work — including Disrupted Portals, Lost Souls, and Atlantean Revival — Payne approaches the act of making as an open investigation. His surfaces accumulate marks, layers, and erasures, revealing a visual record of thought and revision. Each image is both a construction and a collapse, a conversation between control and chance.

Teaching and Academic Role

Payne serves as Associate Professor in the Art Foundations Department at VCUarts Qatar, one of the leading art and design foundations in the world. Since joining the faculty in 2010, he has helped shape a curriculum that emphasizes process, experimentation, and reflective learning.

His teaching philosophy centers on discovery through making — encouraging students to take risks, embrace ambiguity, and find meaning through sustained practice. Payne views the classroom as a creative laboratory where students develop technical ability alongside conceptual fluency.

He describes teaching as a cyclical practice — a space where ideas developed in the studio evolve through teaching, and insights from the classroom feed back into his artistic research.

Research and Projects

Payne’s research bridges analog and digital approaches to image-making. He explores how emerging technologies — including AI-assisted tools and digital rendering — can coexist with traditional drawing and painting methods to expand how we think about composition, form, and visual communication.

He has led several interdisciplinary and collaborative projects that reflect this approach:

Cultural Threads – A collaborative initiative connecting local heritage, pattern abstraction, and design through large-scale installations.

Shawl We? – A textile design project where students reinterpret traditional Arab patterns into contemporary silk scarf designs.

Formula 1 Helmet Design Project – A partnership with the Lusail International Circuit and Formula 1 that guided students in developing custom helmet designs inspired by Qatari culture and F1 aesthetics.

UNseen Selfie – A drawing project encouraging students to explore identity and perception through layered, non-literal portraiture.

These projects merge creative experimentation, cultural engagement, and design research, positioning Payne’s teaching as both a pedagogical and artistic practice.

Creative Work

In the studio, Payne’s work has evolved from observational realism to process-driven abstraction. His paintings and drawings often begin with representational fragments — anatomy, landscape, or structure — that gradually dissolve into rhythmic fields of mark-making.

This evolution reflects a growing interest in how painting reveals the limits of perception and control. His works exist between order and improvisation, suggesting that images are never fixed, only found.

Payne’s artwork has been exhibited in solo and group shows regionally and internationally, and his projects have been featured in publications and collaborative exhibitions across the Middle East, Europe, and the United States.

Education

Payne earned his Master of Fine Arts in Painting and Drawing after completing undergraduate studies in studio art. He joined VCUarts Qatar in 2010, where he continues to teach and conduct research in drawing and design foundations.

Over more than a decade at VCUarts Qatar, he has contributed to developing a globally recognized foundations program — one that prepares students to think critically, experiment fearlessly, and engage art and design as interconnected modes of inquiry.

Selected Professional Highlights

Associate Professor, Art Foundations Department, VCUarts Qatar

Curriculum Developer, AI + Design Minor (in progress)

Lead Faculty & Organizer, Cultural Threads and Shawl We? Projects

Faculty Mentor, Formula 1 Helmet Design Project with Lusail International Circuit (F1 Qatar)

Collaborator, interdisciplinary initiatives linking art, technology, and design education

Exhibitions: VCUarts Qatar Gallery; Fire Station: Artist in Residence (Doha); and international exhibitions in the U.S. and Europe

Research Interests: Drawing and perception, process-driven pedagogy, hybrid analog/digital methods, and collaborative studio practice

Artist’s Reflection

“My work — and my teaching — are grounded in curiosity. I’m drawn to the moment when a drawing starts to misbehave, when clarity gives way to discovery. That same process happens in the classroom every day; both are spaces where learning happens through doing.”

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