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The Painting Department at NCAD is a pivotal national hub of visual and material inquiry. The departments facilities: custom designed light filled painting studios, workshops, seminar spaces and testing galleries are housed on the upper floors of the Granary and Design buildings. Through recent innovations, research projects also take place at emergent partnership sites of learning in the broader city and national context.

The integration of practice and theory – an interactive philosophy of structured peer dialogue provides the philosophical ethos that situates our studio-based teaching and learning in the expanded field of painting. This holistic approach to the invigoration of painting practice is consistently registered in the quality of students' learning and research throughout the academic year – consistently documented in the studio outcomes provided here by a truly dynamic cohort of highly motivated emergent artists.

Re-imagining the historical legacy of image cultures is central to our inclusive and innovative approach to the discipline of painting in the twenty-first century. This discourse of the image frames a broad series of visual concepts and material processes of painting, combining drawing, photography, writing and installation in a synthesising of contemporary practice that enables the capacity to foster new audiences for art and to realise new innovative career pathways for our graduates.