Granite Falls: Express Your Emotions Through Art Class

Saturday, May 17th from 5 – 7 PM “Expressing Emotions Through Abstract” – An Art Class Taught by Zak Jahn.

Zak Jahn is a painter and educator who uses abstraction to explore the inner landscape—the moments we can’t quite name but feel all the same. His work is often a response to whatever emotional weather he’s walking through, and he treats the act of painting as a kind of quiet communion. In this class, he is not here to teach rules. He is here to help you listen—closely, curiously—to your own emotional states, and to translate them into something honest, abstract, and deeply yours. There’s no wrong way to begin. There’s just the start.

Zak makes paintings the way some people keep journals—tracking the emotional shifts, quiet ruptures, and sudden clarity that come with being alive. Abstraction, for him, is not a detour from meaning but a direct line to it. It’s where he goes when language runs out.

In his teaching, he doesn’t ask people to paint what they see. He invites them to feel what they’re carrying and let that shape the work. This class isn’t about technique so much as it is about honesty. It’s about giving form to the in-between moments—grief that doesn’t have a name yet, joy that startles, numbness that still hums with life underneath.

Whether you’re a practiced artist or someone who hasn’t picked up a brush in years, there’s space for you here. I’m here to help you pay attention, to stay with whatever’s present, and to discover the strange clarity that abstraction can offer when we’re brave enough to meet ourselves on the canvas.

Registration for this class is $20 and includes all supplies.

To register, please visit: https://theyeshouse.tiny.us/Abstract

Attendees will be able to take their painted canvas home. This event is open to the public and includes snacks and beverages.

This activity is made possible by the voters of Minnesota through a grant from the Minnesota State Arts Board, thanks to a legislative appropriation from the arts and cultural heritage fund.