Great Lakes Academy of Fine Art Workshops
Great Lakes Academy of Fine Art, 810 W 3rd St, Duluth, MN 55806
About
Great Lakes Academy of Fine Art Workshops offers a 3-Day Still Life Painting Workshop that includes still life painting, drawing, painting, copies, casts, and figure work. The workshop is taught within a classical training program modeled after the traditional European Atelier system that flourished in Paris in the latter half of the 19th century. Teaching includes weekly critiques where students show their mistakes and instructors demonstrate how to correct them.
• Schedule: Jul 17 – Jul 19, 9:00am – 5:00pm for the 3-Day Still Life Painting Workshop
• Price: $450.00 for the 3-Day Still Life Painting Workshop
The Great Lakes Academy of Fine Art is a small, private ARC-approved school and studio offering classical training programs, with a full-time program consisting of up to sixteen students and three or four accepted each year. Students in the full-time program have access to the studio 24/7, 365 days a year. The program’s specific focus is what it refers to as “Classical Impressionism,” defined as “rendering form within a unified light effect,” and it describes the only “secret” and key to success as time spent under the tutelage of a master artist with a trained eye and hard work. The mission states that the focus is to bring out an individual’s level of craftsmanship based solidly within the great and unbroken Western art tradition, training the eye and mind to recreate on canvas subtle beauties in the world, keeping costs as low as possible to avoid finances prohibiting talented students from receiving a solid, practical foundation, and setting aside “talent” and “intuition” while logical and analytical processes are taught and mastered.
The leadership team includes co-founder, director, full-time instructor, and head instructor Jeffrey T. Larson, along with instructors Patrick Glander and Austin Jasurda. Jeffrey T. Larson has been trained in the manner of the Old Masters at the Atelier Lack, Patrick Glander is a graduate of Great Lakes Academy of Fine Art, and Austin Jasurda completed his academic journey at the academy in the spring of 2024. Instructors are described as “painters who teach and not teachers who paint” and are instructing at a practical, professional level. The Ruben’s Project is part of the program and gives students experience in imaginative composition with the goal to make the resulting work look both natural and believable.
The academy is an ARC-approved school. The building history includes a bell in the north tower cast in 1885, hand-built construction in the early 1920s, the last church service held in 2010, and purchase of the building by Jeffrey T. Larson in the fall of 2015. The academy notes that the former church was the spiritual and cultural heart of Duluth’s “Little Italy,” an area populated by Italian immigrants, many of them skilled stonemasons and bricklayers who built much of Duluth’s architecture and landmarks such as Enger Tower and the church building itself.
Last updated July 25, 2026.
• Schedule: Jul 17 – Jul 19, 9:00am – 5:00pm for the 3-Day Still Life Painting Workshop
• Price: $450.00 for the 3-Day Still Life Painting Workshop
The Great Lakes Academy of Fine Art is a small, private ARC-approved school and studio offering classical training programs, with a full-time program consisting of up to sixteen students and three or four accepted each year. Students in the full-time program have access to the studio 24/7, 365 days a year. The program’s specific focus is what it refers to as “Classical Impressionism,” defined as “rendering form within a unified light effect,” and it describes the only “secret” and key to success as time spent under the tutelage of a master artist with a trained eye and hard work. The mission states that the focus is to bring out an individual’s level of craftsmanship based solidly within the great and unbroken Western art tradition, training the eye and mind to recreate on canvas subtle beauties in the world, keeping costs as low as possible to avoid finances prohibiting talented students from receiving a solid, practical foundation, and setting aside “talent” and “intuition” while logical and analytical processes are taught and mastered.
The leadership team includes co-founder, director, full-time instructor, and head instructor Jeffrey T. Larson, along with instructors Patrick Glander and Austin Jasurda. Jeffrey T. Larson has been trained in the manner of the Old Masters at the Atelier Lack, Patrick Glander is a graduate of Great Lakes Academy of Fine Art, and Austin Jasurda completed his academic journey at the academy in the spring of 2024. Instructors are described as “painters who teach and not teachers who paint” and are instructing at a practical, professional level. The Ruben’s Project is part of the program and gives students experience in imaginative composition with the goal to make the resulting work look both natural and believable.
The academy is an ARC-approved school. The building history includes a bell in the north tower cast in 1885, hand-built construction in the early 1920s, the last church service held in 2010, and purchase of the building by Jeffrey T. Larson in the fall of 2015. The academy notes that the former church was the spiritual and cultural heart of Duluth’s “Little Italy,” an area populated by Italian immigrants, many of them skilled stonemasons and bricklayers who built much of Duluth’s architecture and landmarks such as Enger Tower and the church building itself.
Last updated July 25, 2026.
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