MA in Painting

Online event for prospective students

To provide prospective students with opportunities to find out about the RCA experience and programmes we run a number of on-campus and online open days as well as events in various countries around the world. You can find out about upcoming events or watch replays of past open days on the RCA website.

MA Painting at the Royal College of Art is a world-leading, studio-based MA programme with a successful record of turning out artists working at the forefront of the discipline and of international standing. Through our innovative approaches to teaching and learning, we foster a student to consider painting as a creative, self-reflexive, and critical activity that draws on a wealth of diverse historical, material and conceptual disciplinary resources as it thrives in the 21st century. We explore these values together as we share our practices and research while supporting our own in a collaborative culture comprised not so much by staff and students but as professional artists and peers. These activities take place across an expansive and inclusive platform that engages with current issues and debates around the painting as both a medium with a deep and resourceful history and as a vibrant and invigorating contemporary art practice that brings a critical perspective to social and cultural issues that range across global cultures represented by the diversity of the cohort of RCA painting students.

MA Painting supports the development of your research interests as a foundation for your practice and creation. Staff will foster and advance your ability to reflect critically on your studio work in a context that embraces experimentation, innovation and sustainable technical and conceptual gains expressed in the medium. We support the development of your professional practice, as your skills progress in making and presenting work through different modes, to professional and public audiences, within and beyond the institutional frame.

How will I learn?

In the MA Painting programme, you will receive a wide range of inputs from a diversity of positions and voices. Through individual tutorials and group critiques, online group seminars, workshops, artist talks and the presentation of work, you are offered a wealth of opportunities to understand and advance your studio practice informed by the perspectives of your peers, faculty, and invited contributors. The painting studios are an important site for these conversations, as are the artists’ studios, commercial galleries and public art institutions that the vibrant, culturally rich city of London offers.

The MA Painting staff is comprised of full-time working artists and diverse accomplished visiting artists of international standing, who work across a diverse range of media, each with a specialist research focus within the discipline. Although not seen as an end in itself, the programme continues to respect technical skills and supports you to find an appropriate technical resolution for your work in order to enhance the materialisation of your ideas, the communication of these ideas, and the clarity of your concepts and images.

As a team, we are committed to supporting you to refine your research base for your practice and enabling you to forge a sustainable and engaged professional practice situated in the creative economy and art ecosystem.

Programme structure

The programme is delivered across three terms and includes a combination of programme, School and College units.

Term 1

In the Establishing a Painting Practice unit, you will gain an understanding of what informs the content, subject matter, form and execution of your work as well as establish the audio, visual and material research that feeds your work and practice. This unit will begin with a series of technical inductions, artist lectures and seminars presented by the painting faculty to help you establish and orient your practice within the broader painting field. This unit supports you as you produce work, and locate your work within a critical context while reflecting on historical and contemporary approaches to painting, ultimately leading to the development of innovative individual practice. Additionally, students achieve this through curricular content in the form of seminars, workshops, individual tutorials, group critiques and off-site visits.

Across Terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA, the College-wide unit.

Term 2

In the Painting in the Expanded Field: Experimental Positions, you will further examine and challenge the conceptual, aesthetic and material approaches to making that they developed in the term 1 unit, Establishing a Painting Practice. The goal of this unit is to encourage you to deepen your understanding of the future direction of your practice with a focus on interdisciplinarity, experimentation and critical reflection. You will produce finished work at an advanced level and explore various modes of presenting. The end of this unit will culminate in a presentation and a written proposal for the Independent Research Project in preparation for an exhibition in term 3.

In term 2 all School of Arts & Humanities students will participate in the Urgency of the Arts, a School-wide unit. Through this unit, we ask: what do arts and humanities research and practice have to offer in our current socio-political climate? The unit introduces students to a diverse range of perspectives, approaches and practices relevant to contemporary practice and thought in the Arts & Humanities. The delivery is devised to help you identify and query your own practices and disciplinary assumptions through encounters with others and within the various practices undertaken by students in the School, and to raise awareness around contemporary concerns. You will be supported in understanding the ramifications of your own work and practice within a broad cultural context, and recognise its many potentially unintended readings and consequences.

Term 3

The Independent Research Project (IRP), follows two studio-based units: unit 1 establishes the breadth of studio practice and explores critical and contemporary painting contexts, and unit 2 focuses on interdisciplinarity and experimentation within the studio practice towards concerns of public engagement and exhibition, specific to painting. Units 1 and 2 are platforms for preparing you for the IRP: unit 1 supports critical reflection and analysis of contexts for the future development of a painting practice; unit 2 addresses the temporal, material, technical and logistical demands of exhibiting and disseminating work and developing professional practice.

The programme approaches the IRP as a self-directed study centred on an assessed presentation of your work as an exhibition, a publication and a research essay. The IRP is held and supported from within the programme; staff will support your learning and approaches to critical reflection across the stages. The IRP operates as a robust teaching object to develop independent research, critical thinking and reflection on the specific conceptual, material and presentational demands of contemporary painting practice. It is an integral component in supporting you to develop a professional orientation and sustainable painting practice beyond an institutional frame.

What you need to know before you apply

Candidates are selected entirely on merit and applications are welcomed from all over the world. The selection process will consider creativity, imagination and innovation as demonstrated in your portfolio, as well as your potential to benefit from the programme and to achieve high MA standards overall.

The application procedure focuses on searching out candidates that are highly motivated, and independent and demonstrate they have the critical skills necessary to develop and further their existing ideas. In short, those artists that – given the opportunity to join the Painting programme – would utilise their time with us to the full, and have the generosity to support their fellow students.

We welcome candidates from all kinds of backgrounds but generally have completed a BA degree. In recent years, people have come from fine art, printmaking, painting, sculpture, photo media, conservation, illustration, design, textiles, architecture, art history and interactive arts courses.

While many students enter the course after years of independent work, we also accept students directly from undergraduate courses.

Ultimately, we want to attract to the course those artists that want to work in a supportive environment and have the drive and ambition to realise the full potential of their studio practice, in turn energising their peer group.

For full entry requirements, key dates and the application process visit the RCA website.

Fees for new students

Visit the RCA website for tuition fees and for information on scholarships and funding opportunities.

Meet the RCA in Dubai, New York, Korea or Malaysia

We host a range on online and on-campus open days as well as recruitment event in cities around the world. These events can include 1-to-1 meets and portfolio advice, informal chats, presentations and sessions with staff, students and alumni.

Check the Check the RCA event webpage for details of upcoming events.

Programme structure

The programme is delivered across three terms and includes a combination of programme, School and College units.

Term 1

In the Establishing a Painting Practice unit, you will gain an understanding of what informs the content, subject matter, form and execution of your work as well as establish the audio, visual and material research that feeds your work and practice. This unit will begin with a series of technical inductions, artist lectures and seminars presented by the painting faculty to help you establish and orient your practice within the broader painting field. This unit supports you as you produce work, and locate your work within a critical context while reflecting on historical and contemporary approaches to painting, ultimately leading to the development of innovative individual practice. Additionally, students achieve this through curricular content in the form of seminars, workshops, individual tutorials, group critiques and off-site visits.

Across Terms 1 and 2, you will participate in AcrossRCA, the College-wide unit.

Term 2

In the Painting in the Expanded Field: Experimental Positions, you will further examine and challenge the conceptual, aesthetic and material approaches to making that they developed in the term 1 unit, Establishing a Painting Practice. The goal of this unit is to encourage you to deepen your understanding of the future direction of your practice with a focus on interdisciplinarity, experimentation and critical reflection. You will produce finished work at an advanced level and explore various modes of presenting. The end of this unit will culminate in a presentation and a written proposal for the Independent Research Project in preparation for an exhibition in term 3.

In term 2 all School of Arts & Humanities students will participate in the Urgency of the Arts, a School-wide unit. Through this unit, we ask: what do arts and humanities research and practice have to offer in our current socio-political climate? The unit introduces students to a diverse range of perspectives, approaches and practices relevant to contemporary practice and thought in the Arts & Humanities. The delivery is devised to help you identify and query your own practices and disciplinary assumptions through encounters with others and within the various practices undertaken by students in the School, and to raise awareness around contemporary concerns. You will be supported in understanding the ramifications of your own work and practice within a broad cultural context, and recognise its many potentially unintended readings and consequences.

Term 3

The Independent Research Project (IRP), follows two studio-based units: unit 1 establishes the breadth of studio practice and explores critical and contemporary painting contexts, and unit 2 focuses on interdisciplinarity and experimentation within the studio practice towards concerns of public engagement and exhibition, specific to painting. Units 1 and 2 are platforms for preparing you for the IRP: unit 1 supports critical reflection and analysis of contexts for the future development of a painting practice; unit 2 addresses the temporal, material, technical and logistical demands of exhibiting and disseminating work and developing professional practice.

The programme approaches the IRP as a self-directed study centred on an assessed presentation of your work as an exhibition, a publication and a research essay. The IRP is held and supported from within the programme; staff will support your learning and approaches to critical reflection across the stages. The IRP operates as a robust teaching object to develop independent research, critical thinking and reflection on the specific conceptual, material and presentational demands of contemporary painting practice. It is an integral component in supporting you to develop a professional orientation and sustainable painting practice beyond an institutional frame.

The Royal College of Art has been ranked the number 1 university for art & design internationally for the 9th consecutive year, according to the QS World University Rankings by Subject 2023 – the largest world-wide survey of academic and industry opinion.