How not to pack for outdoor painting
Two men look out through the same bars:One sees the mud, and one the stars. (Rev. Frederick Langbridge) Chambered Nautilus, 1956, Tempera on panel, Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art I spent the week in Maine, reconnoitering for my summer workshops, and …
Why does any bird sing?
The above cartoon has been making the rounds among my musician friends this week, and for good reason. Maya Angelou said the caged bird sings for freedom, but in fact birds—caged or free—sing because their songs are hardwired into them. The mother of a young performer said to me recently, “She has always been a …
I’ve been looking forward to this!
My website is online as of today. It’s not a finished piece of work, and has been beset with difficulties, including a hijacked URL, but here it is: https://www.watch-me-paint.com/ The website has an RSS feed from this blog, so I went back and captured an image of it with this post repeating itself. Call this …
Rejuvenation
Workspace or spiritual battleground? This weekend I spoke with a former student who is now in his fourth semester at Rhode Island School of Design. Inevitably, we discussed criticism. He made a point I’ve heard from other students: all art school criticism is fundamentally self-referential. What matters isn’t the technique, intellectual rigor or theory brought …
Seven Deadly Sins
Justicia, left, and Veritas, right, by Walter Seymour Allward, c. 1920. Cast for the never-finished memorial to King Edward VII, which was interrupted by the onset of WWII, they were found buried in 1969 and installed in front of the Supreme Court of Canada in Ottawa in 1970. (Photos by Carol L. Douglas) In reading …