Fine art courses allow students to explore the creative side of art, but for one beginning art class at WSU, students also get the chance to discover what it takes to have their work on display.

Palouse Books in Moscow exhibits artwork in correlation with the Moscow First Thursday community event that occurs on, as the name suggests, the first Thursday of each Month. This month, paintings by a WSU beginning painting class are on display, which started last Thursday.

Jade Lowder, second year master of fine arts student, teaches the beginning painting class and had his work shown at the bookstore a few months ago. The painting class completed six paintings from various prompts, such as creating a “pixilated” painting using small single-color squares, and has since created a large body of work, he said.

But apart from creating work, he said he wanted the class to have a chance to experience the challenges in showing work.

“One thing we discussed was finding a sense of balance,” Lowder said.

The class tried to find the best way to use the space, and it was particularly challenging to show a large collection of work on a small wall, he said.

He said they did manage to place everyone’s work in a, “calming and pleasing arrangement.”

Kimberley Conway, sophomore elementary education major and art minor, said one of her paintings can be found in the upper right corner of the exhibit wall. The eight-by-six wood panel features trees and berries done in oil paint during an outside painting session.

“We could only use our big brush, I used a three-inch brush to do the entire thing,” Conway said.  “It turned out way better than anything I could have ever expected.”

She said her favorite project was painting from a live model. The class took several days to sketch out the model and get the right perspective before painting.

“I actually really enjoyed doing the life painting,” Conway said. “It was mostly to focus on not using the peach-tone Barbie-flesh color, so we had to use colors that we could see there but that most other people wouldn’t be able to see.”

Viva Stowell, owner of Palouse Books, said her favorite paintings were the ones that challenged what it meant to paint.

“I call it the application project, where they had to not use a brush to make a painting,” Lowder said.

He said to create a painting you need three elements: a substance to apply, something to apply it with, and object to apply it too.

“One of my students, she totally just got into the idea of what it means to paint,” Lowder said.

He said she gathered drift wood and used a blowtorch to make her painting. Another student created a painting by pinning balloons filled with paint to a board and throwing darts to pop them. Lowder said the class allows him to talk to other artists about his artistic musings.

“They ask tough questions,” he said. “They challenge me and they challenge each other, which is the best outcome I could want or anyone could want.”

 The Palouse Books used bookstore, located on 2nd Street in downtown Moscow, will display the beginning painting class’ artwork until Nov. 30.