The Creative Process: Autumn Course 2025 with Armin Mersmann

The Creative Process with Armin Mersmann

Examine the creative process and the important "what if" during this 6-week class.The class starts this fall on September 23, 2025 at 6pm Eastern time. Please review the six 2-hour Zoom session dates following this description.

This class focuses mainly on concepts, ideas, and the always-present what-if.

It is an assignment-based class in which I will choose a theme or subject and follow the four art-making principles: Concept, Design, Craft, and Presentation. Whatever medium you are working in, this course can invigorate your thought process. This results into interesting concepts.

Students are encouraged to work on their ideas, fostering creativity and individual expression within the framework of the technical skills and conceptual ideas being developed within the class.

If you are an artist who is curious, motivated, and want to be more creative, this class is for you!

Cost of class is $195.

Dates of Classes:

Tuesday September 23, 6-8 pm EDT

Tuesday October 7, 6-8 pm EDT

Tuesday October 21, 6-8 pm EDT

Tuesday November 4, 6-8 pm EDT

Tuesday November 18 , 6-8 pm EDT

Tuesday December 2, 6-8 pm EDT

Armin Mersmann was born in Remscheid, Germany, in 1955. Along with his parents, he immigrated to the United States in 1962. He grew up in an artistic environment and was greatly influenced and tutored by his father, Fritz, a successful oil painter. Mersmann feels his career as an artist was inevitable: “I never made the conscious choice to be an artist, it’s just what I did.” After six years of college, Mersmann began a very successful stint as a portrait artist in Chicago, IL. Although commission work was financially rewarding, he stopped doing it and soon found more interest in the fine arts—work that at times is controversial but more satisfying conceptually. “Art, my sanctuary, the very thing that gave me such pleasure, was now reduced to making a living. Art is too precious for me to make decisions based on finances.” This does not mean Mersmann will never do a commissioned portrait; rather, it has to interest him conceptually, and he insists on total control over the image.

Although Mersmann is mainly known for his intense naturalistic graphite drawings, he also works in photography and encaustic wax, which is much more abstract than his drawings. “My interests have become exceedingly experimental with more attention placed on the surfaces of the work itself. Discovering and rediscovering my chosen medium is the everlasting stimulus that keeps me interested and excited. Accidental process and meticulous planning co-mingle in all my work. Texture, either real or illusionary, and that one ever-elusive brushstroke, the one that says it all; this keeps me searching and exploring.”

Mersmann has taught drawing, the Creative Process, iPhoneography and Advanced Critique at the American Academy of Art, Chicago, IL; the Colorado Academy of Art, Boulder CO; Northwood University, Midland, MI; the Midland Center for the Arts, Midland, MI; and countless workshops within the United States. He lives in Midland, MI, where he was the Senior Visual Art Curator and Artist in Residence at Midland Center for the Arts. Currently he hosts online classes, teaches at Atelier School of Art and Studio 23 plus is a master mentor for Mastrius online art community. He shares a studio with his wife, Valerie Allen, who is an accomplished artist in her own right.