Painting professor’s past brings color to art department’s painting program

Every great painting is made of countless brush strokes, each adding color to the canvas. The result is a masterpiece filled with new techniques and colors.

Like these paintings, USD’s newest painting professor, Andrew Leventis, has a colorful background of his own to guide his student artists.

After graduating high school in Charlotte, N.C., Leventis went on to earn general education credits at Colorado State University in Fort Collins, Colo. Once he realized he wanted to pursue a career in art, he studied at the American Academy of Art in Chicago for his undergraduate degree.

“I was there for three years, and then I took a couple years off and I went to London for grad school,” Leventis said. “I’d always been angling to go to London and trying to figure out how I could get there.”

While talking with his significant other, who received a grant to complete a one-year teaching fellowship in London, they figured out how to cut the cost of living expenses so Leventis could get his masters degree while his partner did the teaching fellowship.

“I did a one-year degree at Wimbledon College of Art – it was an art-writing degree – and then from there I did the two-year masters at Goldsmiths,” Leventis said.

Goldsmiths is a part of the University of London. After finishing his studies at Goldsmiths, Leventis moved back to North Carolina before accepting an art residency in Mexico called Xochi 360.

Art residencies are opportunities for artists to live and work away from what they know, some are free and some cost money for work space. Xochi 360 was free.

“They pay for everything and they give you studio space,” Leventis said. “My apartment was cool, it was all enclosed just for me, it had a kitchenette area and a studio area.”

After his residency, Leventis worked as an adjunct professor at several colleges in North Carolina from 2013 to spring of 2015. During this past summer, a job opening at USD for a paining professor caught Leventis’s attention. Moderate class sizes and the support of his own work led him to accept this job opportunity. Leventis now teaches all of the painting courses offered through USD.

“Andrew is coming into a program where students may have had two or three other painting teachers already,” said Cory Knedler, chair of the art department. “Which is great experience for them, but it’s also going to be great to have Andrew here so they can experience a little more consistency than we’ve had in the past few years.”

Leventis has a colorful background and a fresh perspective to bring to students at USD. As many professors use the still life model as the focus of art assignments, Leventis’s original pieces use the items surrounding the still life to help tell the story of that person instead.

“Andrew’s art work is based in naturalism I would say, realism, and our students seem to be kind of hungry for that right now,” Knedler said. “With Andrew’s help, students will understand how to work with paint to create the objects so they look like what you want them to look like.”

In Leventis’s classes, students get their own workspaces that are accessible for Leventis to help guide students to get what they want out of their art.

“He’s good at teaching because when you bring ideas to him he’s good at deciding what will work best for you, and what media will help you get to that end result you’re looking for,” said senior Nick Patterson. “He has a good mental inventory of artists, and can refer you to one that has created something with that media and you can do the research to see how it will work.”

(Photo: Professor Andrew Leventis shows two students an example of a painting of two vases. Besides general education and an undergraduate degree in art, Leventis also studied in London for graduate school. Eden Hemmingson / The Volante)