Busmanās holiday
Good technique means laying off the weird experiments, and pouring your creativity into the narrow area that mattersāthe content itself. My current canvas. āHas anyone ever bought a house and not thought the previous owner was nuts?ā my daughter Laura asked me. Our current home is the exception to that rule, but we bought it …
Monday Morning Art School: why study art history?
Understanding the major movements in western art will make you a better painter. Yo Yos, 1963, Wayne Thiebaud, courtesy Albright-Knox Art Museum. This, I think, is the first Thiebaud canvas I ever saw. Wayne Thiebaud passed away on Christmas Day at the age of 101. Thiebaud is best known for his pop-art still lives of …
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Christmas Eve memories
It wasnāt Santa Claus but it was magic nevertheless. Santa toy, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 in a narrow silver frame, available this month through Camden Public Library. We were raised without Santa Claus, my parents believing that it was bad to lie to children. Furthermore, my mother was inept at gift-buying. It was the …
Go outdoors and enjoy the weather
āāThe trick,ā said I, turning on my stool with coffee cup in hand, āis not to adopt a siege mentality.āā All flesh is as Grass, 30X40, oil on linen The above quote is from novelist Van Reid. He was musing on the winter. I copied his essay here and I hope you will read it …
Monday Morning Art School: the opacity of paints
To understand refraction, just remember that hideous invention of the 1970s, the wet t-shirt contest. The Logging Truck, 16X20, oil on linen, on exhibit this month at Camden Public Library. Opacity (or āhiding strengthā, if you prefer) is a simple way of describing a paintās refractive index. Opaque pigments refract, or bend, more light. Transparent …
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