Tereza Barnard studied psychology before she studied painting. That sequence is not incidental.

Most painting courses are organised around the artist who teaches them. The implicit promise is that if you follow the method closely enough, the work will eventually resemble theirs. The Realist Academy is built on a different premise.

The curriculum teaches you how to think about painting: how shadows function, how texture operates, how different artists across the discipline have answered the same formal problems — so that you can determine what you actually want to do. The instruction is direct and efficient. What it does not cover is basic measurement and construction techniques; there are many courses for that.

The programme addresses the full architecture of a serious practice: technical thinking, the development of a coherent artistic voice, and the professional frameworks for understanding how work gets positioned and reaches the people who value it. These are treated as parts of one problem.

It does not tell you what kind of painter to become. It gives you more precise means of finding out.