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Category: learn to paint

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When artists retire

“This was the first window I did,” said Gowing. “The window represents Holy Communion with grapes standing in for wine, and to my delight, John found glass that looked just like matzoh, the original communion bread. He painted in the air holes and edges. To date, John still hasn’t ever seen a matzoh in person, but I keep meaning to send him a box.”
A graduate of Pratt Institute, Toby Gowing had a successful career as an illustrator, specializing in books for young-adult readers. From there, she moved to painting luscious still lives on Chinese antiques, which she sold throughout the Northeast.
The feeding of the five thousand, by Toby Gowing, John Warda and Lynn Julian. “The landscape in the background is typical of the Judean hills,” said Gowing.  “In all the windows John and Lynn picked certain greens and other colors to create continuity in the project.”  There will be eight windows in all.
When she told me she was retiring, I was baffled. Accountants retire; artists do not. Still, Gowing has a knack for listening to the still, small voice of God, and she has hardly been bored. Among other projects, she was asked by Louise Jasko of Monmouth Worship Center in Marlboro, NJ, to design windows for their newly built sanctuary. Gowing collaborates with glass artisans John Warda and Lynn Julian of White Haven, PA, who execute and install the windows.
Gowing’s painting for The feeding of the five thousand, above.
Gowing feels her illustration background is the primary skill she brings to window design, and her painting and drawing chops allow her to accurately communicate her ideas to Warda. “He never asks, ‘Is this a fish or a flower?’ but he has told me when certain shapes or placements just won’t work,” she says.
A detail from the Four Seasons window, below, shows the collaborative nature of these windows. Artists John Warda and Lynn Julian sought the perfect glass for the crocuses, the nest, the branches, and the leaves.
“This is the most recent window, in which I was asked to make the Bible itself the subject,” said Gowing.  “By choosing Ecclesiastes 3:1 as the verse, I had opportunity to make the background (the four seasons) colorful and lively as a counterpoint to the plainness of the book pages. The red bookmark ribbon is a subtle reference to the sacrificial blood of Jesus Christ, which runs as a scarlet thread throughout the whole Bible. By continuing the line of the ribbon into the upper left hand corner through the movement of the pussy willow branch, and down to the bottom of the window through the tree branch which holds the birds nest, I remind the viewer that the saving sacrifice of Jesus Christ is not confined to the pages of the Bible, but courses through all the seasons of our lives.”
How did she make the move away from oil painting? “I undertook a period of studying stained glass, particularly windows done by Tiffany studios, so that I could understand how to design for a new media,” said Gowing.  “Tiffany was a painter, and his approach in windows is painterly. This appealed to me.”
Gowing’s painting for the Four Seasons window, above.
The glass designer can’t think primarily as a painter. “When I design, I am always thinking, ‘How will this work out in glass?  Will this line flow so that the leading will make sense and also add to the composition?  Is it possible to make this shape in glass?’” said Gowing.  She frequently talks with Warda as she works. “I ask him if a type of glass exists which would carry a particular image or create an effect.  There are thousands of types of glass which may be purchased, but we are limited by budget and time.”
John Warda installing The feeding of the five thousand at Monmouth Worship Center.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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A New Status Quo

The Death of Marat, 1793, by Jacques-Louis David, is imbued with both emotional connection and revolutionary fervor.
Jacques-Louis David was not merely a painter; he was, above all, a revolutionary. Moreover, he had perfect pitch for the sentiments of the age.
In the 1780s, as French opinion stiffened against the Ancien RĂ©gime, David was painting severe neoclassical history paintings in reaction to the Rococo fantasies of the monarchy. His pen-and-ink-drawing, The Oath of the Tennis Court (1791) was an attempt to turn those history-painting skills toward the current crisis.
The Oath of the Tennis Court, 1791, was David’s portrait of the formation of the National Assembly. It brought him to the attention of the Jacobins.
This work brought him to the attention of Robespierre and his fellow Jacobins. (As a member of the Committee of General Security, David was directly involved in the Reign of Terror.) On July 13, 1793, David’s friend, the journalist and politician Jean-Paul Marat, was assassinated by Charlotte Corday.  The Death of Marat is David’s most celebrated painting, and for good reason: it vibrates with personal feeling rather than intellectual ideals.
Consecration of the Emperor Napoleon I and Coronation of the Empress Josephine in the Cathedral of Notre-Dame de Paris on 2 December 1804, 1805-07, Jacques-Louis David.
David admired Napoleon’s classical features and Napoleon esteemed David’s skill. This led to a remarkable series of portraits of the Emperor—Napoleon crossing the Alps on a fiery steed (he had, in fact, ridden a mule), Napoleon crowned in Notre-Dame, Napoleon up all night in his study, writing the Code Napoleon.
General Étienne-Maurice GĂ©rard, 1816, by Jacques-Louis David. At the time, both painter and subject were exiles in Brussels.
Following Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo in 1815, David, a convicted regicide, fled to Brussels. There he painted his fellow exile, General Étienne Maurice GĂ©rard. Again, David shifted to meet the times. The overblown allusions and antique coloring of his revolutionary period are gone; now he examines his subject with a deepened sense of realism.
Although the enormous social changes wrought by the American and French Revolutions could not be entirely undone, the powers that defeated Napoleon wished, as much as was possible, to return Europe to its prerevolutionary dynastic structure.  
The Eltz Family, 1835, by Ferdinand Georg WaldmĂŒller, is set in front of the Alpine village in which Dr. Eltz had recently built a house. 
One genie that couldn’t be put back in the bottle was the rising middle class. They were not particularly interested in aping their betters’ mania for classical allusion. Nor were they interested in the emotionalism of the Romantic portrait. Rather, they went for what the newly-wealthy have always wanted—a display of their economic success in a swirl of clothing and furnishings.
Portrait of Monsieur Bertin, 1832, by Jean Auguste Dominique Ingres. M. Bertin was a respected upper-middle-class man of commerce and letters in the restored French monarchy.
This week I considered new forms portrait painting that reached maturity during the intellectual ferment of the Enlightenment. These posts are based closely on the Royal Academy of Art’s 2007 show, Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760-1830.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

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Selective Roman virtues

Mrs. Siddons as the Tragic Muse, by Sir Joshua Reynolds, 1783. A Welsh former lady’s maid, Sarah Siddons went on to be recognized as the greatest tragedienne of her age. As an actress she was outside social mores. She was painted by both Gainsborough and Reynolds, whose portrait of her is more typical of a male “status portrait” of the time.
In the late 18th and early 19th century, women  were essentially invisible in the public sphere. This was in part due to society’s selective embrace of Roman values.
The ancient Romans, although in some ways progressive for their time, were explicitly patriarchal. The paterfamilias maintained strict authority over his family and household. Nevertheless, Roman women did have important rights and privileges, such as the right to carry on business, remarry, and own property. Women played a prominent role in the official cults, including the Vestal Virgins, who were Rome’s only full-time professional clergy.
Comtesse de la ChĂątre (Marie Louise Perrette AglaĂ© Bontemps), 1789, painted by Élisabeth Louise VigĂ©e Le Brun, who was the most famous woman painter of the 18th century. This is a more typical female portrait in that the subject’s social status is conveyed by her dress and surroundings.
What a surprise that the men of the Enlightenment selectively chose what Roman virtues to apply! Once again, we can look to Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s Ă‰mile for insight into their interpretation of Roman patriarchy.  Émile, as the ideal man, is educated to be self-governing.  Sophie, the ideal woman, is educated to be ruled by her husband.

Rousseau’s theory of sexuality is still repeated by some today:

Who can possibly suppose that nature has indifferently prescribed the same advances to the one sex as to the other and that the first to feel desire should also be the first to display it. What a strange lack of judgment! Since the consequences of the sexual act are so different for the two sexes, is it natural that they should engage in it with equal boldness? How can one fail to see that when the share of each is so unequal, if reserve did not impose on one sex the moderation that nature imposes on the other, the result would be the destruction of both and the human race would perish through the very means ordained for its continuance. Women so easily stir men’s senses and awaken in the bottom of their hearts the remains of an almost extinct desire that if there were some unhappy climate on this earth where philosophy had introduced this custom, especially in warm countries where more women than men are born, the men tyrannized over by the women would at last become their victims and would be dragged to their deaths without ever being able to defend themselves.
Is it any wonder that Mary Wollstonecraft felt compelled to write A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in 1792? Not that it had much of an immediate impact: Feminism would not get traction until the middle of the 19th century.

Mme de Wailly, sculpted by Augustin Pajou, 1789. After the second century BC, the wearing of togas by respectable women was a faux pas associated with prostitution and adultery. Women wore the stola, which was a long, pleated dress, worn over an undergarment called the tunica intima. In other words, real Roman matrons did not wander around with their breasts hanging out.
This week I am considering six forms of portrait painting that reached maturity during the intellectual ferment of the Enlightenment. These posts are based closely on the Royal Academy of Art’s 2007 show, Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760-1830. 

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Enlightenment family values

Sir Robert and Lady Buxton and Their Daughter Anne, 1786, by Henry Walton.
Those of us who look with dismay on recent trends in family structure might be surprised to learn that we are not the only age that has redefined family relationships.
Prior to the Enlightenment, very few children appeared in paintings. Unless you were the Baby Jesus, John the Baptist, a royal prince, or a bit player in a grand historical melodrama, the chances of you appearing in a portrait were slim. Of course, that reflected the role of children in society in general.
The Braddyll Family, 1789, by Sir Joshua Reynolds. The strong pyramidal structure emphasizes their familial stability, and if you missed that they embody virtue and citizenship, then the copy of the Medici Vase (a famous Roman antiquity) is there to remind you. 
That changed with the need to explain society in terms of intellectual, rather than religious, values. To the eighteenth century man of letters, the family was the cradle of virtue and good citizenship. Children were no longer seen as stained by Original Sin; rather they became symbols of innocence. The child’s relationship with his parents changed (at least in the homes of the educated classes). It was less formal and more affectionate.
Gainsborough’s Daughters Chasing a Butterfly, 1756. Thomas Gainsborough painted his daughters many times. They are exquisitely affectionate portraits.
The French philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau had a great impact on the attitude of the Enlightenment toward children. “If children understood how to reason they would not need to be educated,” said Rousseau. Rousseau believed that the countryside was a more natural and healthy environment for children. He believed children learned from the consequences of their actions, so their teachers should be more along the lines of a Roman tutelary deity—keeping the kid from hurting himself—than an old-fashioned pedagogue.
If any of this wants to make you snort milk up your nose, bear in mind that Rousseau gave up each of his children as newborns to a foundling hospital. Like all the best educational theorists, he was an idealist, not a practitioner. Nonetheless, his ideas influenced child-rearing across Europe, although in practice they were modified to meet the exigencies of reality.

The Byam Family, Thomas Gainsborough, 1762-66. George Byam and his wife Louisa sat for the original portrait in the early ‘60s. A few years later, they returned with their first child, Selina, and Gainsborough added her to the portrait.
Rousseau and other 18th century thinkers were borrowing from the classical writers in extolling the virtues of the countryside over city life. This extended to their preference for informal gardens in the naturalistic English style over the formal gardens of old Europe.  As one father told his son, “one of the main reasons we live in the country both summer and winter is to teach us from an early age that simplicity, moderation and industry are inextricably bound to our basic happiness.”*
Thus the family portrait on the grounds of an estate was meant not primarily to express the wealth of the sitter, but to place the family in a natural environment, with all the blessings that implied.
This week I am considering six forms of portrait painting that reached maturity during the intellectual ferment of the Enlightenment. These posts are based closely on the Royal Academy of Art’s 2007 show, Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760-1830. 
*Child of the Enlightenment: Revolutionary Europe Reflected in a Boyhood Diary by Arianne Baggerman, Rudolf Dekker, and Diane Webb. 

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Portrait of the artist

Sir Joshua Reynolds painted himself as a man of letters, in his robes as a Doctor of Civil Law at Oxford (1776). Note the absolute absence of any paint on that outfit.

Prior to the middle of the 18th century, fine artists were considered craftsmen. While they may have been very successful and well-paid, they had no particular intellectual pretensions.

The Enlightenment cast artists in the role of communicating the civic virtues. This raised the social status of artists from artisans to gentlemen. Their training moved from the old apprenticeship/atelier model to formal art schools. The Royal Academy of Arts in London is representative. It was founded in 1768. Its mission was to raise the professional status of the artist by establishing a sound system of training and expertise in the arts.

Portrait of a rather emotional French sculptor, Antoine Denis Chaudet, by miniaturist Jean-Baptiste Jacques Augustin. I feel like I should give him a cookie.
The Enlightenment also brought us the Cult of Genius, with its handmaidens, Feeling and Creativity. The artist no longer primarily tried to render beautiful images; he was engaged in profound and creative thought.

Meeting of Artists in Isabey’s Studio, 1798, by Louis-LĂ©opold Boilly, in which a bunch of artists apparently get together and talk about art instead of making it. Not that that ever happens.
As counterintuitive as it seems, this is what has landed us in the modern dilemma of having so much banal, boorish, casual and ultimately meaningless material foisted on us as art. The intellectual mind can always be seduced by the idea of transgressing limits, whereas a craftsman generally seeks to raise his standards to the highest degree possible.
The problem with transgression as one’s sole intellectual concept is that it keeps extending the limits. Thus today’s portrait of the artist has become Kanye West and a topless Kim Kardashian on a motorcycle.

This week I am writing about portrait painting during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These posts are based closely on the Royal Academy of Art’s 2007 show, Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760-1830. 

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Monarchs and Militants

Portrait of King George III, 1779, by Sir Joshua Reynolds
The Age of Revolution was a time of great change in the intellectual and political life of Europe and America. Portrait painting—previously considered an inferior art—rose in prominence. On the one hand, portraits reached a peak of representational virtuosity. At the same time, they became overwhelmingly symbol-laden and propagandistic.
The majority of Europe still lived under kings who ruled by Divine Right. Those kings generally were painted in the full splendor of their office, with their authority spelled out with symbols like crown, scepter and orb.
Portrait of Queen Charlotte in Her Coronation Robes, 1779, by Sir Joshua Reynolds
Alone among his fellow monarchs, George III’s Divine Right had been clipped by the British Constitution. His authority was also inevitably reduced by the loss of the American colonies. Sir Joshua Reynolds’ portrait of him shows him overwhelmed by his coronation robes and by the looming darkness of Westminster Abbey. Likewise the character of Queen Charlotte in her matching portrait is reduced despite her royal setting. She is restrained and modest; in short, a model housewife of her period.
Napoleon on his Imperial throne, Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres, 1806
Contrast this with the power and authority radiating from Jean-Auguste-Dominique Ingres’ radical, domineering portrait of Napoleon Bonaparte. Ingres drew together an absurd variety of classical allusions to lend credibility to the upstart Emperor of France.
In his right hand Napoleon holds Charlemagne’s scepter; in his left  is the hand of justice. He is crowned with Caesar’s golden laurel wreath. His ermine hood, velvet cloak, and satin tunic all conjure imperial imagery, as does the eagle on the carpet beneath his feet. Because the Ghent Altarpiece was in the Louvre at the time Ingres painted, it is presumed that he modeled the pose on its central figure, The Almighty.
George Washington (Lansdowne Portrait), 1796, by Gilbert Stuart
Gilbert Stuart, the image-maker for the new American states, chose the opposite symbolism to portray George Washington, showing him as a sober and industrious workman creating a new age. In the new democracy, crown has morphed into cockaded hat, orb and scepter into a dress sword representing democracy.  The rule of law is paramount, represented by both the books and the pen and paper on his desk.
This week I am writing about portrait painting during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. These posts are based closely on the Royal Academy of Art’s 2007 show, Citizens and Kings: Portraits in the Age of Revolution, 1760-1830. 
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!

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More on that Christian art thing

Knight, Death and the Devil, woodcut, by Albrecht DĂŒrer, 1513
Part of the heated discussion that ensued after my post Friday about the so-called problem of Christian music expressed a general irritation with performers who identify themselves as Christian artists. We’re all aware of the capacity of modern artists to drape themselves over the cross for marketing purposes. However, there has always been a distinction between artists who work in religious themes because that is their marketplace, and those who are genuinely faith-driven.
Albrecht DĂŒrer achieved extraordinary success very quickly. He produced a variety of works including many of a secular nature, and actively sought and exploited the patronage of Maximillian I. None of that indicates a profoundly religious man.
However, DĂŒrer left a large body of writing that indicates that at some time he had a true religious conversion. He became an early and enthusiastic follower of Martin Luther.  His new Protestant sympathies can be felt in his later work, a transition pushed along by the death of his patron in 1519.
In 1524, DĂŒrer wrote that “because of our Christian faith we have to stand in scorn and danger, for we are reviled and called heretics.” And in expressing thanks for the gift of one of Luther’s books, he wrote, “I pray Your Honor to convey my humble gratitude to His Electoral grace, and beg him humbly that he will protect the praiseworthy Dr. Martin Luther for the sake of Christian truth. It matters more than all the riches and power of this world, for with time everything passes away; only the truth is eternal.”
Circle of the Lustful: Francesca da Rimini (‘The Whirlwind of Lovers’) 1826-7, from William Blake’s illustrations of Dante’s Divine Comedy.
William Blake is another artist whose copious writings make his religious fervor easy to document. However, understanding them is another matter entirely. (I confess I take him in small doses.) His illustrations for Dante’s Divine Comedy include extensive margin notes in which he argues with Dante’s theology.
Blake was literally a visionary: he saw visions from childhood on. He was a believer, but he hated the church. His contemporaries thought him quite mad. But his poem “And did those feet in ancient time” comes down to us as the great patriotic hymn Jerusalem, set by Sir Hubert Parry in 1916.
I kind of like his assessment of the character of Jesus:

If he had been Antichrist Creeping Jesus,
He’d have done anything to please us:
Gone sneaking into Synagogues
And not us’d the Elders & Priests like Dogs,
But humble as a Lamb or Ass,
Obey’d himself to Caiaphas.
God wants not Man to Humble himself.

Conversion on the Way to Damascus by Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio, 1601
Compare these two painters to Michelangelo Merisi Caravaggio, another brilliant painter of religious scenes. His patrons were Cardinal Francesco del Monte and Cardinal Girolamo Mattei, and his subject matter was overwhelmingly religious, but Caravaggio could by no stretch of the imagination be described as a “Christian artist.” A brawler with an extensive police record, he managed to nick a rival in the groin with his sword, severing an artery and killing the poor man. This led to Caravaggio’s exile and ultimately to his death.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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The so-called problem with Christian music

Newworldson, from just over the border in St. Catharines, Ontario.
My inbox overflowed with comments yesterday about “the problem with contemporary Christian music”, after an essay by Michael Gungor. I was dumbfounded.
Gungor’s full of bunk. Contemporary Christian music has been in a renaissance for the past two decades. This makes sense in that we’ve been in a period of evangelical fervor (some have called it the Fourth Great Awakening) since the mid-sixties.
Of course, it’s important to remember that every artistic movement includes a lot of dreck. For example, the British Invasion gave us the Kinks’ Muswell Hillbillies but it also gave us Do Wah Diddy Diddyby Manfred Mann.
What the heck! Let’s just feature photos of Canadians today. This is Starfield, from Winnipeg, Manitoba.
Following is a list of current Christian music in a variety of styles. (I’m bypassing contemporary black gospel for the most part, because it’s at least another blog entry, one I’m not qualified to write.) After listening, can you really say that contemporary Christian music has a problem?
All Around/Israel Houghton
Break Every Chain/Jesus Culture
Count Me In/Leeland
Deathbed/Relient K
He Reigns/Newsboys
Hosanna/Starfield
In the Light/DC Talk
Jesus Movement/Audio Adrenaline
My Delight Is In You/Christy Nockles
My Generation/Starfield
New Creation/Leeland
Revelation Song/Phillips, Craig & Dean
Rooftops/Jesus Culture
Signature of Divine/Needtobreathe
The Face of Love/Sanctus Real
The Orphan/Newsboys
The Saving One/Starfield
Thrive/Newsboys
Your Great Name/Natalie Grant
Working Man/Newworldson*

*Full disclosure: my personal faves. And they’re from St. Catharines, Ontario.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Making money the old-fashioned way

Saying Grace by Norman Rockwell, 1951
A Norman Rockwell painting sold at auction at Sotheby’s in Manhattan yesterday for $46 million. This was twice its pre-sale estimate of $15-20 million and a record for a Rockwell painting.
The painting, “Saying Grace”, was one of seven Rockwells in the auction. Two other Rockwell Saturday Evening Post covers, “The Gossips” and “Walking to Church,” sold for just under $8.5 million and a little over $3.2 million respectively.
These three paintings were formerly on long-term loan to the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. They were sold by descendants of Kenneth J. Stuart, the Evening Post art editor who worked with Rockwell for nearly 20 years. All three had been given to Stuart by Rockwell.*
Walking to Church by Norman Rockwell, 1952. You can buy a signed print of this for approximately what Rockwell was paid for painting it, or you could have gotten the original yesterday for about a thousand times his fee (not adjusted for inflation).
Rockwell was paid $3500 for “Saying Grace” in 1951. That translates to roughly $32,000 in today’s dollars. This would be tremendous money for any illustrator today, and shows how highly illustration was valued in mid-century America. However, even adjusted for inflation the sellers got around 1500 times the price Rockwell received for actually painting the thing.
Sadly, if you’re doing your job right as an artist, this is how it goes. This might seem counterintuitive when considering such a popular artist as Rockwell. But even during the Golden Age of Illustration, few people considered illustrators to be fine artists. It’s taken time and distance for us to see Rockwell, Howard Pyle, or N.C. Wyeth as the great artists they were. But consider John James Audubon, William Blake, or Albrecht Durer. Their work, too, has become more rarified by time, but they were also, fundamentally, illustrators.
The Gossips by Norman Rockwell, 1948
At any rate, the few hundreds or thousands you get for your work today will, if all goes as planned, translate into a fortune in some future swank showroom in, say, Abu Dhabi or Macau.
*Having done my share of illustration, this seems like a squishy provenance to me. It’s just as likely that the work got shoved behind a cabinet and forgotten, and Stuart had the good sense to take it home rather than let it be thrown away.

Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!
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Paralysis

Me, working again. What a relief.

Any artist who tells you they have never suffered from creative paralysis is a liar. In my case, this is often the first step of a major series of work. It takes the form of extreme anxiety, where I can’t even walk through my studio doors. My solution is usually to approach the project sideways. I do little studies until I regain my nerve.

That would have been my normal approach last month, as I cleared the decks to work on a major show next spring. But what would have been a temporary state has been outrun by the events in my personal life.
This morning, I enter the maw of modern medicine again in the form of a pre-surgical meeting for a recently-diagnosed cancer. I’m not overly worried about the long-term outcome, but recovering from my last surgery has been awful for my work habits.
Why do people seek out psychics? Actually watching fate bearing down on us is an awe-inspiring and terrible thing. This month, two people dear to me moved through the final stages of death. I was useless for anything other than the most habitual tasks. I felt as if the circuits of the heavens were opened up, and I could do nothing except stare.
One built, eight more to go. But that’s progress.
I suppose I could have handled my physical recovery, my loved ones’ deaths, or the anxiety of a new project separately, but the combination of the three was too much.
Ultimately, I used others—most notably, my husband and my assistant Sandy—as emotional battering rams. With their support, I was able to get back to work. It’s a funny thing about painting: it’s essentially a solitary act that is also a form of communication to the world. And death is a solitary act that is also universal; nobody escapes it.
Each time we artists stumble and fall, we think, “It’s all over now. I’m ruined; I can’t meet my commitments.” I was well into that mantra of self-condemnation until I recollected that I’ve banked a lot of hard work over the prior year. If I don’t sell another thing in 2013 (and since I’m about to have another surgery, I doubt I will) it’s still the best year I’ve had since 2008.
Let me know if you’re interested in painting with me in Maine in 2014 or Rochester at any time. Click here for more information on my Maine workshops!