When things turn ugly in an art class

As I have mentioned a number of times, I love my art teacher. He is my dream teacher. He walks around saying brilliant things, and seems to say just the right thing at the right moment. Tonight, one of his comments to me was "The key here is to keep this thing kicky, while staying coherent." He also compared painting to writing and target practice.
While he is my dream teacher, it seems he is someone else's nightmare. One of the students in our class is a woman who hasn't seemed happy from the get-go. She was hoping for a technique class.

They got into it in our last class, and things turned ugly. She said, "You are trying to make me into an abstract painter." His response to this was, "Everything is abstract. Language is abstract. I'm not trying to make you into anything. I'm just trying to help you look at things." I thought that was a fine response. But, then things escalated quickly, and resulted in her saying something nasty about his ability as a teacher. The conversation continued to take a bad turn, and he ended up saying to her - "Maybe you should not paint." She said, "Maybe you should get a life." Then, she walked out. My dream teacher looked a bit sick and was clearly rattled. The rest of us were working quietly and intensely on our own paintings during all of this.

After class, I walked out with a fellow student who was concerned about the woman who stormed out. She said, "Painting is all she has. She's one of those traditional women who has just followed her husband around." I thought to myself, maybe this woman does need to expand her horizons a bit. You see, my teacher may have intuitively sensed that this woman needed to have a break from the painting. That is how fucking brilliant he is.

Why I love my art teacher - Part 2

My art teacher has boozey breath with coffee overtones. His latest bit of wisdom was the following:

It's difficult to find solutions if you are still searching for the questions. Stay with the questions. And if all else fails, just make a bold broad stroke in a bright colour and hope for the best.

Here is a sampling of some questions that came up for me today:
Is John Baird the missing link?
Why can't I remember to bring my lunch when it's sitting there all ready to go on the table?
Why do I like huge American cars when I'm supposed to hate them?
How could a person lose a completed passport application before sending it in to the passport office?
How do people have the energy to jog?
Do I have any clean socks for tomorrow?

Reasons why I love my art teacher....

1) He has boozey breath.
2) He tells me to push the paint around and see what happens.
3) He says supportive things like "I see transformation in this piece. Bring it back next week. We can work with this."
4) When I responded with, "Yes, I'm seeing some addition of red in this piece", he responded with a punch in my arm.
4) He encourages us to get out and look at a lot of art.
5) He hates Renoir.