Best Painting & Drawing School | Develop Your Artistic Practice at SAIC

A zoomed in view of a person holding a palette brush against a large canvas with many swipes of colors such as red, turquoise, yellow, green, blue and orange.

Painting & Drawing Department

The Department of Painting and Drawing at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) is home to a diverse range of conceptual and material approaches. It is an open, pluralistic community with a primary emphasis on experimental consideration for painting and drawing in the 21st century.

Lindsay Adams, "Land Marked, Once Ours," 2023

Graduate Programs Priority Application Deadline: December 1

SAIC's Graduate Programs offer a priority deadline and reduced application fee before December 1.

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Undergraduate Early Action & Priority Merit Scholarship Deadline: December 1

Submit your application and portfolio by December 1 to be considered for fall 2025 admission and priority merit scholarship.

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File Your FAFSA

In order to be eligible for need-based aid such as SAIC, state and federal grants, loans and work study you need to file the Free Application for Federal Student Aid (FAFSA) at fafsa.gov.

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Lindsay Adams, "Land Marked, Once Ours," 2023

Freedom to Explore

#2 Best Painting & Drawing Program

U.S. News & World Report
Best Fine Arts Grad School Rankings

A person sitting at an easel painting in a studio.

Experimental Approach to Learning

An experimental, multi-disciplinary approach to learning, challenging students to explore their ideas across a myriad of disciplinary forms and procedures.

A professor cleaning a paintbrush with a student watching carefully.

Dedicated Faculty

Diverse and dedicated faculty, consisting of more than 70 working artists whose work appears in galleries and museums across the globe. Collectively their various practices embody a wide array of conceptual and material models for painting and drawing.

An impressionist painting of Vincent van Gogh's bedroom.

Vincent van Gogh, The Bedroom, 1889, Oil on canvas, 73.6 × 92.3 cm

Expansive Body of Work

Access to the internationally recognized collection of the Art Institute of Chicago, which presents an encyclopedic body of work that spans 5,000 years of creative expression from cultures around the world.

Renowned Alums

A long record of alums who have attained a high level of achievement in their careers, earning exhibitions in world-renowned galleries and museums, teaching positions at leading Institutions, and grants, awards, and prizes reflecting excellence in their field. Recent alums of note include Tony Lewis, Allison Zuckerman, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, Angel Otero, Amanda Ross-Ho, Jeni Spota, and Zak Prekop.

Students working on paintings in a classroom

Fully Equipped Classrooms

Large, well-lit classrooms, critique spaces, and studios where students develop their practices, hold open discussions, and engage in rigorous dialogue with faculty and students which tests strategies of production and presentation.