Thinking About the Diagnostic Painter Workshop? Read This First.

My Rehab and Recovery Experiences After Repeated Diagnostic Painter Exposure

By Debra Keirce, Guest Contributor

Disclaimer: I am of sound mind. I am making these choices without coercion, duress, or the influence of mind-altering substances (unless you count the fumes of that expensive tubed medium).  I take full responsibility for any and all mental or physical damage – including, but not limited to, obsessive edge-checking and unbroken gradient insomnia that occurs due to my willingness to submit to the teachings of Anthony Waichulis.

Have you ever considered the Ani Art Academies curriculum? Perhaps you’ve flirted with buying the Language of Drawing [LOD] course, or the Language of Painting [LOP] DVDs – those sacred ÀNI curriculum white binders that weigh as much as a toddler. Maybe you’ve considered joining the annual Diagnostic Painters workshop, the Alla Prima Zoom sessions, or the biweekly Sunday morning Roundtables. If so, you understand. The sheer volume of the Smartermarx website and other resources produced by the ÀNI team is awe-inspiring. To participate with them is to voluntarily enter a high-stakes laboratory where your artistic ego goes to be dismantled and reassembled into something more… calibrated.

What follows is my account of the consequences I have endured from my ÀNI exposures.

The Initial Trauma

The first time I ascended the mountain to the ÀNI Art Academy in Pennsylvania, I was overwhelmed and dangerously optimistic. I brought two paintings for Anthony to evaluate, emboldened by a written promise that he would perform critiques.

The first was a whimsical piece inspired by a mission trip to Belize, during the year the Mayan calendar was supposedly ending. I felt it captured the “end of the world” zeitgeist beautifully. The second piece was a western scene, a tribute to an artist friend who had passed suddenly. I was “feeling all the feels,” curating her memory into every brushstroke. I was ready for a deep, soul-searching dialogue about narrative and emotion, and how realistic art portrays stories.

Anthony approached. He looked at my paintings. He promptly placed both of them in a cupboard and said he would get to them later. When you are on the Waichulis property, you quickly realize you are in a different ecosystem with its own gravity. You go with the flow. A few days later, the long-anticipated critique happened. Anthony told me one was “really good” and the other was “good too.” That was it. No mention of the Mayans. No tears shed over the Western legacy. Just… good.

The Search for Meaning

Confused, I consulted the other students. A few were kind enough to offer the usual subjective interpretations. Some suggested I kill the chroma in the squirrel’s ear – a sentence that makes perfect sense only in this specific zip code. Others suggested more depth of field for the horses. I processed it all, but deep down, I was haunted. Why didn’t Anthony think my work was worthy of a more rigorous dissection?

It took me years to realize that in the Waichulis Universe, a lack of comment isn’t an insult. It’s a lack of errors relative to his specific scientific parameters. As my friend Laurie Szylvagyi explained, if you want a specific answer from Anthony, you ask for specific information, like “Is my edge control in need of some work?” or “Would a change in chroma here improve the illusion of realism?” You don’t ask him questions about an artwork or issue without specification.

He won’t tell you how to make an award-winning, “sure-to-sell” masterpiece. He won’t play the subjective game. He is there to tell you if your 2D information is successfully masquerading as a 3D object. It turned out that all the mentors who had been “feeling the feels” with me for years weren’t necessarily wrong. They were just playing a different, more subjective game. ÀNI Art Academy doesn’t play games.

The ÀNI curriculum is a scientific embrace of how 2D information can cause the human eye to see 3D form. It’s not about “vibes.” This realization triggered my immediate need for a rehabilitation stint. I had to know if I was lacking ANY artistic potential.

The Long Road to Rehab

Realizing I was woefully ignorant of the ÀNI dynamic and curriculum, I did what any rational person would do. I jumped into four years of self-directed “rehab.” I put myself through the LOD/LOP exercises that full-time students survive, relying on sheer tenacity and the digital camaraderie of the Smartermarx community to get through the grueling drills. I emerged from those four years feeling accomplished. I had “street cred” (at least in my own mind). My rehab was complete. Admittedly, it’s not as good as a program where you can show up at the studio in person, but still, I was ready for my next DP workshop. I was a new woman.

Then, at my fifth Diagnostic Painters workshop, Anthony brought out the gel filters. In an instant, my brain reset to factory settings. I was so fixated on ensuring my chroma and value fell off across the forms that I completely forgot to match basic color. It turns out that four years of rehab can be undone by a single sheet of colored plastic and a high-intensity lamp.

The Ongoing Recovery

Clearly, I am still in recovery. I likely always will be. Broken colors and dust particles in paintings now raise my blood pressure. Forms that turn seemingly effortlessly give me dopamine hits. But I’ve come to accept this. In the world of high-definition realism, recovery isn’t a destination. It’s the lifestyle. I have embraced the journey of being a lifelong student of the observable world. 

All joking aside, the uniqueness of the ÀNI Art Academies, and in my opinion, the reason for its success, is rooted in the incredible emphasis on technique, based on science.  I am a student of so many programs. I have studied the entire Bargue Drawing Course, countless Dutch and French Academic method-based teachings, and more videos, books, and workshops than I can count. But Anthony Waichulis created and refined the only curriculum for creating realistic artwork I have come across to date, which works to separate subjectivity from certain aspects of training and focuses entirely on adaptable, tangible skill sets, articulated in exquisite detail.

I will forever be a recovering painter of realism, a survivor of the mountain, and a grateful disciple of the Church of Waichulis.

Debra Keirce

Join my art journey at DebKArt.com