Art Classes, Workshops and Events in Dallas, TX
Dallas has the museums, the galleries, and the Arts District. What it has less of is small, quiet painting classes where a teacher watches your canvas for three hours and corrects you as you work. That is the gap Art Be You fills for Dallas students. Our studio is in Richardson, about twenty minutes north of downtown Dallas on Central Expressway, and Dallas residents have been driving up to our evening classes for years.
The classes are led by Bartosz Beda, a professional painter with an international exhibition record. Groups stay at four to six students. All materials are included. If you are looking for art classes in Dallas, TX that feel like a working studio instead of a lecture hall, the drive is short and the parking is free, which downtown rarely offers.
Painting Classes for Dallas Adults
Two evening courses run at the studio each week. Both meet from 6 to 9 PM, after work and after the worst of the traffic on US 75 has cleared. Dallas students from Uptown, Lakewood, Oak Cliff, and the northern neighborhoods reach us in twenty to thirty-five minutes, depending on the side of the city they start from.
The acrylic painting course meets on Tuesday evenings. Acrylic suits beginners and returning painters: it dries fast, forgives mistakes, and builds a finished painting in layers. Students work on canvas through still life, landscape, and their own subjects, with the teacher demonstrating each step on his own canvas first.
The watercolor painting course meets on Thursday evenings. Watercolor rewards patience and punishes hesitation, so it is taught in careful stages, from controlling the water in the brush to timing a wash as it dries. Students leave each session with studies and, over a session, finished paintings.
There is no fixed script that both groups march through. The teacher sets the work from the students in the room that evening. A Dallas lawyer who has not painted since school gets a different first month than a retired teacher who paints at home and wants a harder problem. Current sessions and enrollment are listed on the class pages themselves, because they change through the year. The art classes overview compares the two courses side by side.
Before enrolling, many Dallas students read how to choose a painting class in Dallas. It was written for this city and covers class size, materials, teaching style, and the questions to ask any school, including ours.
Workshops That Come to You in Dallas
For groups, the teaching travels into Dallas instead. A workshop runs about ninety minutes. The teacher brings paints, brushes, canvases, table covers, and printed instructions, sets up in your room, runs the session, and cleans up. Every participant leaves with a finished painting and paint on at most one sleeve.
Senior communities across Dallas book painting workshops for their residents. Canvases arrive with the drawing already sketched, so residents spend the session painting rather than struggling with a blank surface. These workshops run in independent living, assisted living, and memory care settings, and they are the reason some Dallas buildings have residents’ paintings hanging in their hallways.
Corporate team events suit Dallas well. The city is full of headquarters and offices whose teams sit in front of screens all week. A painting event puts tools in their hands for ninety minutes, and it works for holiday parties, appreciation events, and team building days. Groups run up to thirty people. The details live on the art workshops page.
Gallery and museum groups sometimes ask for something different: a working painter’s session before or after seeing an exhibition. If your Dallas group wants a workshop built around a visit to the Arts District, ask. The studio is flexible about one time events in the city.
Dallas and the Arts
Dallas students are spoiled for looking at art, and we encourage them to look. A painting class teaches your hands. Museums teach your eyes. These are the places we send Dallas students most.
Dallas Museum of Art. The anchor of the Arts District, at 1717 North Harwood Street. The collection holds more than 25,000 works across 5,000 years, from ancient objects to contemporary painting. General admission is free, and the museum is open Wednesday to Sunday, 11 AM to 5 PM. For a student learning to paint, the European and American galleries alone are a semester of lessons in how pictures are built.
Nasher Sculpture Center. Across Flora Street at 2001 Flora Street, in a Renzo Piano building with a walled garden. The Nasher shows modern and contemporary sculpture indoors and out, and it is the best place in Dallas to think about form in space. Open Wednesday to Sunday, 11 AM to 5 PM. Adults pay a small admission, and the first Saturday of each month is free.
Crow Museum of Asian Art. At 2010 Flora Street, also in the Arts District. The Crow shows art from across Asia, from historical craft to contemporary work, and admission is free. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 11 AM to 5 PM. Painting students should go for the ink works alone: nobody teaches economy of brushstroke like a Chinese or Japanese master with one loaded brush. The Crow also has a second museum on the UT Dallas campus in Richardson, a few minutes from our studio.
Dallas Contemporary. In the Design District at 161 Glass Street. Dallas Contemporary shows living artists, often at large scale, and does not keep a permanent collection, so every visit is a new argument about what painting and art are doing now. Admission is free and the museum is open Thursday to Sunday. Students who think contemporary art is not for them usually change their minds here at least once.
Meadows Museum. On the Southern Methodist University campus at 5900 Bishop Boulevard. The Meadows holds one of the finest collections of Spanish art outside Spain, from medieval panels to Goya and Picasso. For a painter, it is the closest place to stand in front of Spanish brushwork of that quality without flying to Madrid. Thursday evenings are free.
The neighborhoods. Outside the Arts District, Deep Ellum carries a century of Dallas art and music history in its walls and murals, the Bishop Arts District in Oak Cliff fills its streets with small galleries and shops, and Fair Park holds the largest collection of Art Deco exhibition buildings in the country, best seen during the State Fair each fall. Klyde Warren Park, built over the freeway in 2012, ties the Arts District to Uptown and gives the museum blocks a front lawn.
A Short History of Dallas
Dallas began in 1841, when John Neely Bryan set up a trading post on the east bank of the Trinity River. The settlement grew slowly until the railroads arrived in 1872 and 1873, crossing at Dallas and turning it into the shipping point for North Texas cotton and grain. By the early 1900s the city was a banking and insurance center. In 1930 the East Texas oil boom made it the financial heart of the oil business, even though the wells were a hundred miles away.
The city carries a harder chapter too. President John F. Kennedy was assassinated at Dealey Plaza on November 22, 1963, an event that marked Dallas for a generation. The Sixth Floor Museum now tells that story from the building where the shots were fired.
The Dallas of today rebuilt its reputation partly through art. The Arts District, planned from the 1980s and now the largest urban arts district in the United States at 68 acres, put the museums, the opera house, and the symphony hall in one walkable downtown grid. The painter teaching our classes exhibits and works in this region, and Dallas students benefit from living in a city where looking at serious art is free and twenty minutes from most front doors.
Getting to the Studio from Dallas
The studio is in Richardson, just north of the Dallas line. From downtown and the Arts District, the drive is about twenty minutes on US 75, Central Expressway, and evening class times are set so you travel after the rush. From Lakewood and East Dallas, Greenville Avenue runs straight to Richardson. From Oak Cliff and Bishop Arts, allow about thirty-five minutes. From North Dallas neighborhoods along Walnut Hill and Royal Lane, the studio is fifteen minutes or less.
DART light rail also works. The Red and Orange lines run from downtown Dallas to the Arapaho Center and Galatyn Park stations in Richardson, the same line that serves the Arts District stations, so a museum afternoon and an evening class can share one line and one evening.
Parking at the studio is free and close to the door. Students carrying a canvas at 9 PM appreciate that more than any other detail on this page.
Questions Dallas Students Ask
Why is the studio in Richardson and not in Dallas?
Space and cost. A working painting studio needs room, parking, and rent that a small school can carry, and Richardson gives all three while staying twenty minutes from downtown Dallas. Students get a real studio instead of a borrowed room.
I work downtown. Can I make a 6 PM class?
Usually, yes. The drive north on Central Expressway after 5:30 PM runs against the worst traffic, and students from downtown and Uptown do it every week. If your work hours run late, the Thursday watercolor course is the same time, so pick the medium you prefer.
Do I need experience or my own supplies?
Neither. Most Dallas students start as beginners, and all materials are included in the course. Bring yourself; the studio provides the rest.
Can our Dallas office book a painting event?
Yes, if your group is thirty people or fewer. The teacher comes to your office or venue in Dallas with everything included. Start at the art workshops page and tell us your date and group size.
Can I buy a class as a gift?
Yes. A gift art class covers a full session at the studio, and the person receiving it chooses the course and session that fit their schedule.
Can I see student work before I enroll?
Yes. The studio posts student paintings as they finish, on our Instagram and Facebook pages, and the first class article shows what a beginner’s first evening actually produces, so nobody has to guess what they are signing up for.
Start Painting, Dallas
Dallas gives you world class museums for free and a small working studio twenty minutes north. Look at the art on Flora Street, then come make some of your own. Choose the acrylic painting course on Tuesdays or the watercolor painting course on Thursdays, and check the current session on the class page.
More cities are listed on our Where We Teach page, including Richardson, Plano, and Garland. Follow the studio on Instagram and Facebook to see student work as it comes off the easels.