WSS Instructors
Faculty at WSS are practicing artists with diverse educational backgrounds. They are dedicated to sharing their knowledge and experience and committed to furthering students’ pursuit of study in the visual arts. Instructors provide students with an arsenal of skills, while maintaining a sensitivity to each student’s individual artistic inclination.
STUDIO FACULTY
COURTNEY APPLEQUIST
Courtney Applequist is an interdisciplinary artist based in Potomac, MD. Her work explores a range of media, with a focus on painting and drawing using architecture as a foundational framework and asserting a visualization of movement, time, and the debris as a consequence of it. With a deep interest in the use of portraiture as an examination of an individual and their context, she is exploring the possibilities that form offers, expanding ideas of identity and the relationship of materiality & scale.
Courtney holds a BFA from Baylor University and studied painting at the Washington Studio School. She has exhibited in various galleries locally, SXSW in Austin, TX, Delegation of the European Union, WashingtonDC, and is currently represented by AdahRose Gallery. Her work was highlighted in the Washington Post (June 2023) and she is a 2023 GLB Project Seed Grant recipient . Applequist is a co-founding member of the ICEbox Collective, a multimodal artist group whose work fosters critical thought and dialogue across cultural boundaries through a collaborative social & public art practice. Her work with ICEbox Collective received the AIR Grant from ArtsFairfax, Virginia, was published in ArtMargins MITPress, and exhibited at the Embassy of the Czech Republic, Transformer DC, the Mexican Cultural Institute, Washington DC and La Casa del Maquio in Mexico. To learn more about Courtney visit courtneyapplequist.com
REEM BASSOUS
Reem Bassous earned her BA from The Lebanese American University and her MFA from The George Washington University. She has taught drawing and painting at The George Washington University, the University of Hawaiʻi at Manoa, and at Leeward Community College. She was also the Founding Director of the Hō‘ikeākea Gallery in Honolulu, where she developed and initiated a transformative, community-centered exhibition practice centering indigeneity. Bassous has been the Artistic Director and Head of Faculty at the Washington Studio School since September 2023. Her regional and national exhibitions include solo shows at the Honolulu Museum of Art, SBCAST Gallery in Santa Barbara, and the Washington Studio School Gallery. Her work has been reviewed by publications including the Washington Post, Art Asia Pacific and the Honolulu Star Advertiser, and is in permanent collections at the Honolulu Museum of Art and the Shangri La Museum, as well as significant private collections. To view more of Reem's work, visit https://www.reembassous.studio/
JILL BATEMAN
Jill Bateman is a practicing artist in the Washington, DC, area and has long been an active member of the WSS community. She graduated from the Master Certificate Program at the Washington Studio School and the Corcoran School of Art and Design Program in Painting and Drawing. Jill also studied art at the University of California in Los Angeles and the University of Tennessee, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in French. Her work is held in corporate and private locations throughout the Washington, DC, area. She is currently represented by the Foundry Gallery. Jill’s work crosses a range of media and is largely figurative. She often works ‘blind’ into her work, finding that if the mind’s need to make something look ‘right’ can be quieted, the hand and eye record the honest truth. Jill seeks to understand and capture the essence of the human form - believing that all else is contained therein. To view more of Jill's work, visit https://jillbateman.net/ or on Instagram at @Jillan9.