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Monday Morning Art School: cloud painting

Fog over Whiteface Mountain, 11X14, $1087 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Cloud painting trips up emerging artists more than any other element. To paint clouds properly, you must first draw them properly. Clouds are not are flat little cutouts, and rendering them like that marks a painting as amateurish. The same perspective rules that apply to objects on the ground also apply to objects in the air.

A two-point perspective grid. You don’t need to draw all those rays, just the horizon line. The vertical lines indicate the edges of your paper.

 Clouds have volume

I’ve written before about two-point perspective. It’s a great theoretical concept but a lousy way to draw. However, understanding it is useful, especially in cloud painting.

Draw a horizontal line somewhere near the middle of your paper. This horizon line represents the height of your eyeballs. Put dots on the far left and far right ends of this line, at the very edges of your paper. These are your vanishing points.

A cube drawn with perspective rays. It’s that simple.

All objects in your drawing must be fitted to rays coming from those points. A cube is the simplest form of this. Start with a vertical line; that’s the front corner of your block. It can be anywhere on your picture. Bound it by extending ray lines back to the vanishing points. Make your first block transparent, just so you can see how the rays cross in the back. This is the fundamental building block of perspective drawing, and everything else derives from it. You can add architectural flourishes using the rules I gave for drawing windows and doors that fit.

As a practical tool, two-point perspective breaks down quickly. In reality, those vanishing points are infinitely distant from you. But it’s hard to align a ruler to an infinitely-distant point, so we draw finite points at the edges of our paper. They throw the whole drawing into a fake exaggeration of perspective. That’s why I started with a grid where the vanishing points were off the paper. It doesn’t fix the problem, but it makes it less obvious.

All objects can be rendered from that basic cube.

(There is also three-point perspective, which gives us an ant’s view of things. And there are even more complex perspective schemes. At that point, you’ve left cloud painting and entered a fantastical world of technical drawing.)

Basic shapes of clouds using the same perspective grid.

Clouds follow the rules of two-point perspective, being smaller, flatter and less distinct the farther they are from the viewer. The flattest part of cloud paintings is at the bottom of the sky. All you see of clouds directly overhead is their bottoms. In between is a steady shift from side view to bottom view.

A flight of cumulus clouds or a mackerel sky is always at the same altitude. That means their bottoms are on the same plane. That’s because clouds form where the temperature changes.

We paint cumulus clouds because they’re ubiquitous and lovely. Luckily, they form up in consistent patterns, with flat bases and fluffy tops. I’ve rendered them here as slabs, using the same basic perspective rules as I would for a house. In reality, their bases aren’t square and their tops are far puffier. This is just so you see how they’re distributed in the sky.

When cumulus clouds start piling up into thunderheads, they appear to violate this rule of perspective, but that’s just because of their vast size.

Basic shapes of clouds using the same perspective grid.

I don’t want you to go outside and paint clouds with a perspective grid. This is just for understanding the concept before you tackle the subject. Then you’ll be more likely to see clouds marching across the sky, rather than pasting puffy white shapes on the surface of your painting.

Maynard Dixon Clouds, 11X14, oil on archival canvas board, $869 includes shipping in continental US.

Painting starts with drawing

In order to paint, you must first learn to draw. Sometimes people point to abstraction to argue otherwise, but simplification actually requires top-notch drawing chops.

That’s why I’m teaching a drawing class on Monday evenings starting a week from today. This class is always a hard sell because people think drawing is ‘hard’ or ‘boring.’ Nothing is farther from the truth. If you’re trying to be a better painter, start by refining your drawing skills.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Energy vampires and painting

Breaking Storm, oil on linen, 30X48, $5579 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

“Fifteen years from today, your income will be within 10% to 15% of the average of your 10 closest friends’ income,” financial advisor Dave Ramsey wrote. He was drawing on a massive 2022 social-media study by Raj Chetty, et al, that showed economic connectedness to be the single greatest predictor of economic mobility.

Like so much data analysis, this study is built on assumptions that may be faulty. Still, the idea lines up with common sense. Anyone who’s spent time in the art world knows that it’s easier to get a Manhattan solo show when your closest friends are on the Upper East Side. Humans tend to dress like, drive like, and talk like their tribe. We’re herd animals, and group-norming is a powerful impulse. If it makes you work harder as an artist or strive to be more successful, that’s great, but group norming can also be a force for mediocrity or worse.

Heavy Weather (Ketch Angelique), 24X36, oil on canvas, framed, $3985 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Energy vampires

There are people who suck energy out of the room. Ramsey calls them “energy vampires,” and advises us to tell ourselves, “The people that I spend time with that are negative are going to be limited to the amount of energy that I have to help them not be negative.”

Some of these situations are unavoidable: the person in a health crisis, the elderly neighbor who’s alone during the holidays. We’d be inhumane to ignore them. But some of them are like an annoying dripping faucet; we’re so accustomed to their carping that we don’t ever assess whether the relationship is healthy.

We presume that if we give selflessly, the other party always benefits. It’s sometimes surprising when your best efforts backfire or are misconstrued, but you may be actually harming that other person more than you’re helping.

Energy vampires are often drama queens. It’s painfully easy to get sucked into their battles; the classic model for that being “let’s you and him fight.”

Brigantine Swift in Camden Harbor, 24X30, oil on canvas, framed, $3478 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Situational depression vs. energy vampires

We will all go through times in our life where we’re dealing with crisis or tragedy. Situationally-depressed people can mimic energy vampires, with the same narrow focus and worldview. It’s sometimes hard to tell the difference, but humanity requires that we treat our situationally-depressed friends with kindness.

This is a special problem for artists

I’ve been self-employed since 1990. The one universal truth of working from home is that people think you’re free to lavish time and attention on them. It’s true that our schedules give us flexibility, but all those demands grow like weeds and before we know it, we don’t have time to paint.

Many painters have a similar personality style to my own: fundamentally we’re introverted but we play extroverts in public. Most of us are intuitive, because that’s how art works. These traits make us vulnerable to manipulation.

Camden Harbor, Midsummer, oil on canvas, 24X36 $3188 includes shipping in continental US.

Dealing with energy vampires

It’s important to remember that we’re not responsible for others’ emotional states. We need to set boundaries, either of time and space, or emotional barriers.

If you always feel drained, anxious, foggy, or stressed after spending time with a particular person or social group, that person may be an energy vampire. You don’t need to tolerate constant negativity. It gets in the way of your real work.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Ghosts of Christmas past

Christmas Eve 2, oil on canvasboard, private collection.

Until her extreme old age, my Italian grandmother lived in Irish South Buffalo. We lived 38 miles north, but went to see her each week. The most important pilgrimage of our year was on Christmas Eve. You wouldn’t have dared skip it even if you wanted to.

A holiday that spans nearly fifty years ends up with a mishmash of traditions. My grandmother, who didn’t drink, once sent my aunt to the corner liquor store for a bottle of Old Overholt rye whiskey. It reappeared every holiday. My uncles and father, who did drink, instead quaffed Southern Comfort Manhattans until they were squiffy. It probably helped them tolerate the caterwauling of our Christmas play. I never got to be Mary; I have too many girl cousins.  However, I could racket along the high notes on “Oh, Holy Night.” That was the sweetest revenge of all.

“Christmas Eve,” oil on canvasboard, 6X8 private collection.

In my childhood, my grandmother served baccalĂ  and anchovy crispelles because Christmas Eve is a fast day for Catholics. There were also ham and Brussels sprouts because this was America. We had struffoli and cut-out cookies and a birthday cake for an aunt. Later, when our family grew to outsize proportions that was replaced with lasagna because you can make it in advance.

My mother and aunt confessed they hated the smell of frying fish. “Nobody likes baccalà anyway,” my mother said. Well, I did, so I took over frying. It always disappeared. My own children now make it, but it’s one of the few things I still remember how to cook.

Late December is peak season for Buffalo’s notorious lake-effect snow, and the south half of Buffalo is where the winds sweeping off Lake Erie usually concentrate their fury. It was a mayor from South Buffalo, who in the teeth of a blizzard told us to, “go home, buy a six pack of beer, and watch a good football game.” (That meant any team other than the Bills, who were 2-14 that year.) One year, it blizzarded so badly that my then-new husband and I struggled to make the ten blocks from our apartment to Grandma’s house; another, we plowed our way down the Thruway to Rochester with snow over the bumper of our minivan. I miss that kind of weather.

Snow squall, 6X8, private collection.

That was before downstate governors started closing the upstate Thruway in bad weather; it was just assumed that drivers knew their own limits. Anyways, Americans back then had big families, and we kids were packed together in our snowsuits in the backs of station wagons. I don’t think we could have frozen, although the question never came up.

Inevitably, we were late for Christmas dinner. When we arrived, our snow clothes were piled in a mountain on my grandmother’s bed. One year, my infant cousin slept peacefully underneath them before my aunt remembered where she’d left her.

Because my extended family was devoutly Catholic (we were not), the party broke up in time for Midnight Mass. Back then, you could buy milk from streetside vending machines in South Buffalo. There was one on South Park Avenue, casting a solitary glow on the silent soft snow. My mother saved her quarters for this last Christmas Eve stop. We then headed home through the deserted streets, windshield wipers and flying snow lulling us to sleep.

Brooding Skies, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $522

Later, I rejected my unchurched childhood and started going to midnight services myself. My grandmother grew too feeble to stay in her own home. Eventually, as is the way with all of us, she and most of her children passed on. My cousins and I are grandparents now. My own kids are busy on Christmas with families of their own. I’ll see them later this week.

Wherever you are, whatever your traditions, may this be the most magical of holidays for you.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: draw yourself a very merry Christmas

The ornaments we chose: a simple sphere for me and a globe-spider for Sandy.

I was surprised to learn that a few of the things on my tree are vintage post-war Shiny Brite ornaments made by Corning. That’s not because I’m chic, but because I never replace what ain’t broke. Here’s a Christmas-tree exercise Sandy Quang and I first did in 2017. All it takes is a simple, round, reflective ornament, and you can draw yourself a very merry Christmas indeed.

Those of you who don’t believe in Santa Claus or haven’t found the ornaments yet can find other spherical objects: marbles, snow globes, billiard balls, or even some tiny planetary bodies, if there are any revolving around your house.

Noting the axes.

Sandy was my painting student and went on to get a BFA from Pratt and an MFA from Hunter. She’s also my goddaughter, so it was no surprise that she was hanging around my living room in the runup to that Christmas.

I asked her if she wanted to draw with me. As all my best students do, she had her sketchbook tucked in her backpack. I gave her first dibs and she chose the spider ornament; that left me with the plain globe.

We both added details. Mine were the ellipses on the collar of the ornament; Sandy’s were the beaded legs of the spider and her first markings for reflections.

I’ve written about drawing a pie plate, which is the fundamental skill underlying all column-shaped objects from cups and dishes to lighthouses. Each are a series of ellipses on a central axis. A circle is even easier to draw. And a sphere looks like a circle when it’s down on paper. What could be simpler?

Both of us started with the axis of our drawing. For me, that was the vertical axis; for Sandy it was the axis holding her circles together. I mention this because when people say “I can’t draw!” they seldom realize how much of drawing is simple measurement. It’s best to learn this from life, since the measurement has already been done for you when you work from a photo. You can easily work back from life drawing to working with pictures, but it’s harder to go the other way.

Marking out the outlines of our reflected shapes.

Next, we put the appendages on our spheres. For me, that meant measuring the ellipses in the collar, as I demonstrated in that pie plate post. For Sandy, it was the beaded spider legs. Sandy was starting to note the overall areas of reflection in her spheres.

Sandy and I chose different approaches in the next step, dictated by the paper we were working on. Because I had a smooth Bristol, I was able to blend my pencil line into smooth darks with my finger. Sandy could only work light-to-dark on the rougher paper she was carrying. This gives you the chance to see two different approaches to shading.

We both worked on shading next. I finished my shading with an eraser, Sandy couldn’t do that because her paper was too rough.

Sandy has a shadow under her final drawing because the ornament was sitting directly on my coffee table. I put the reflection of myself drawing in my ornament.

All drawing rests on accurate observation and measurement. Get that right and the shading and mark-making is simple. A very merry Christmas indeed!

Our finished drawings: mine on the left, Sandy’s on the right. From there, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to painting them.

What does this have to do with you?

Yes, I’m on a drawing tear, because it’s the single most important thing you can do to improve your painting in 2025. I still have room in my drawing class starting right after the new year; if you’re frustrated by your painting, start with the fundamentals.

This post originally ran in December, 2017. It’s been updated, of course.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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The science behind ‘don’t be boring’

Possum, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

“The limited bandwidth in our optic nerve is reserved for those things we don’t expect. We effectively only notice things that are surprising – that’s how we can compress information efficiently. It’s similar to what happens in a television. There’s an expectation value for each pixel and the data is only used to the extent that the pixel deviates from the expected level of the one that precedes it, or the one that adjoins it. So that very thing of being interestingly less wrong: there’s a complete difference between things we notice and things we perceive.“

That’s Rory Sutherland in The Spectator, and he was quoting a theory from The Experience Machine: How Our Minds Predict and Shape Reality, by Andy Clark. Clark is a philosopher, not a neuroscientist, and one of his key theories—that our brains are essentially prediction machines—seems awfully simplistic to me. Nevertheless, his point about the optic nerve is backed up by science.

Toy Reindeer with double rainbow, oil on archival canvasboard, 6X8, $435 framed, includes shipping in continental US.

How your eyes work

The optic nerve has a limited number of axons, which are the things that conduct electrical impulses. That bandwidth constraint means our visual system must prioritize and condense information. 

Much of that data compression happens in the retina itself, where photoreceptor cells and ganglion cells focus on edges, contrasts, and motion. Then these signals are sent to the optic nerve. 

Our retinas filter spatially by detecting changes in luminance across different areas of the visual field. They filter temporally by detecting changes in brightness over time. If there are no changes, there’s no need to forward more data.

Hiking, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

Once that happens the brain uses context and prior knowledge to interpret what the optic nerve has sent. Much of what we ‘see’ is really a reconstruction built on what we’ve seen before. So the value of ‘don’t be boring’ is that it makes the eye and brain really look.

How Colin Page does ‘don’t be boring’

One of my favorite galleries is the Page Gallery in Camden. I’m constantly surprised by something there. This week, Lisa Renton gave Poppy Balser and me a detailed audiotour of (of all things) their Christmas tree. It combines natural plants with unnatural finishes and iridescent tinsel (which is a lot better executed on their tree than in the product photos).

Right now Colin seems to be in a rainbow sherbet phase; it’s cool, arresting, luminous, and you can’t really understand the subtle high-key balance from the online photos. Nathaniel Meyer is painting somewhere between the Canadian great Lawren Harris and fairy tales. Marc Hanson has some lovely small monotypes that say nothing and everything. Next time I go in, there will be something else that stops me cold or makes me laugh.

Stuffed animal in a bowl, with Saran Wrap. 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

How you can do ‘don’t be boring’

I’ve written before about the importance of not being boring, but maybe it’s more accurate to say that we should strive to be innovative and surprising. That doesn’t mean awkward or badly-composed, and it certainly doesn’t excuse terrible drafting or paint handling. But with technical competence comes the freedom to think about whatever you want, rather than what others have thought about before. That means spending less time painting and more time drawing and thinking. What are you thinking about that might translate into something new and different in paint?

Speaking of drawing

I still have room in my drawing class starting right after the new year. It’s the best thing I can recommend to improve your painting in 2025. (Yeah, I’m talking to you.)

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Ten free Christmas gifts

Beauchamp Point, Autumn Leaves, 12X16, oil on archival canvasboard, $1449 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Yesterday I woke to rain sluicing against my bedroom window. I hate cold winter rain. I am not alone in that; the parking lot at Erickson Fields was empty.

Of course, it wasn’t as bad as I expected. Inclement weather is almost never as bad as it looks from indoors. When it is, the excitement usually outweighs the discomfort.

Cape Spear, Newfoundland, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $522 includes shipping and handling within continental US.

I ran into my friend J. She’s not only an avid dogwalker, she’s also a doctor. I told her how little exercise I’ve gotten in the past month; it’s mostly been walking from the hospital parking ramp to my daughter’s room and back. The more sedentary I was, the more anxious I was and the more inclined I was to have a few glasses of wine at night.

She agreed that being out every day in nature is a terrific balm for one’s worries. Walking—which is free and available to almost anyone—is a two-part gift.

Clary Hill Blueberry Barrens, watercolor on Yupo, ~24X36, $3985 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Ten free Christmas gifts for the artist on your list, i.e., you

Given a choice of flying, driving, or walking, I’ll always go with the slowest practical option. I see so much more on foot. The things I notice engage my mind and spark painting ideas, but nature is in itself soothing.

Then there are the physiological benefits of exercise. They’re the best free Christmas gifts you could want:

  1. Exercise makes you happy. Just 10-30 minutes of sustained exercise is enough to improve your mood. It increases our response to serotonin and norepinephrine, which reduce feelings of depression.
  2. Exercise helps control your weight. I didn’t believe this until I saw how quickly my weight rose during my forced inactivity.
  3. Exercise develops strong muscles and bones and delays the loss of muscle mass that comes with aging.
  4. Exercise helps with pain. My mother, a geriatric nurse-practitioner, used to say that people with arthritis had to keep moving. Since I never planned to get old, I didn’t pay too much attention. But science says she was right.
  5. Exercise helps build bone density in the lumbar region, neck, and hips. I’m vain enough that the number one reason I don’t want osteoporosis is to avoid a dowager’s hump. You might be more practical.
  6. Exercise can increase your energy levels. Of course, if you’re daft and you start off by overdoing it, you’ll have exactly the opposite result. But if you build slowly into an exercise regimen, you’ll find you feel much perkier.
  7. Exercise will make you healthier. I’ve now had cancer three times, but it hasn’t killed me. I take that as a win. I don’t have the chronic diseases of aging like diabetes, heart disease, hypertension or high cholesterol. The rates of all of the above are reduced with exercise.
  8. Exercise will make you more beautiful. It helps delay skin aging, and reduces the free radicals that wreck our skin. Clearly, I am the poster child for this.
  9. Exercise can help your brain health and memory, which is probably why I’ve been feeling so scrambled recently. It also slows down brain aging.
  10. Exercise helps you sleep.
Mountain Path, oil on archival canvasboard, 11X14, $1087.00 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

The most important tool for an artist

Everyone else is going to nag you about an exercise program on January 1; I’m starting now. Your chances of acclimating yourself to being out in winter are better in mid-December than they’ll be next month.

The cool thing about walking and hiking is that they cost nothing more than the price of shoes, which you were going to buy anyway. No membership fees, no fancy equipment, no special foods are required. If we want to paint into our extreme dotage, a healthy body is perhaps the most important tool of all. There you go, ten free Christmas gifts. Treat yourself.

Of course, if you also want to spend money, you can use the promo code XMAS100 to take $100 off your choice of any paintings on my website.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: treading-water syndrome

Coast Guard Inspection, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Canadian-American mystery writer Charlotte MacLeod coined something she called, ‘treading-water syndrome’. This was, “panic at being out of one’s depth. Fear that, if a case did not quickly yield up its secrets, it would remain forever impenetrable.” The character who said that was a middle-age college professor. By putting those words in his experienced mouth, MacLeod was saying that it happens to us all.

That’s just what happened to me at my first professional plein air event. I was slopping solvent around my underpainting, which made everything dark and muddy. Then I tried to use white to lighten that layer. In fact, I was pretty much breaking every painting rule I’d ever learned. Eventually, a friend came over and brought me up sharp: “Carol, stop this. You know how to paint.” I took a deep breath, wiped out the canvas, and painted the painting properly.

The Wreck of the SS Ethie, oil on canvas, 18X24, $2318 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

My friend Brad Marshall called what I was doing ‘flailing around.’ It’s a good description of one way in which we temporarily take leave of our senses. But it’s not the only way. There’s also:

  • Creative block: you suddenly have no ideas at all, or if something occurs to you, it doesn’t seem worth pursuing;
  • Obsessing over details: I’ve wrecked some perfectly wonderful paintings doing this;
  • Avoidance or procrastination;
  • Negative self-talk;
  • Imposter syndrome: “Why did they let me in when there’s so many great painters here?” Bobbi Heath can attest to how many times she’s had to talk me off this cliff;
  • Emotional and physical distress: in moments of stress, I’ve learned to look and sound calm, but my gut always betrays me;
  • Seeking external validation: That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it requires that there’s someone around who’s kind-hearted and intelligent enough to give you the right nudge.
Drying Sails, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, $869 framed.

First principles

I just heard a story about a very competent musician who couldn’t make it in music. His highs were too high; his lows too low. He essentially never found a way to manage his panic.

One way to get over treading-water syndrome is to get older; you’re less inclined to panic in general. That’s not much comfort to younger people. And there are still times when everyone feels like they’ve lost control. How, then, do you get your ship righted with the least amount of psychic pain?

It helps me to have a plan. I approach painting the same way each time, and if I’m feeling jittery, I slow down on the value drawing until my mind submits. I teach every workshop from a syllabus. That’s primarily so I know I’ll cover the important stuff. However, when something unexpected happens, I can take a deep breath, return to my notes and keep going.

A plan is just an external support to our cognitive flexibility and self-monitoring. You can’t beat it.

Skylarking, 24X36, oil on canvas, $3985 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Eensy weensy bites

As you can imagine, there’s rather a backlog here after I’ve been gone so long. I’m pretty disciplined about studio work before housework, but some of these domestic tasks haven’t been done since October. If I try to tackle everything at once, I’m just going back to bed until after the holidays. Instead, I’m going to ignore the big picture and tackle one small thing at a time. It’s my best strategy to avoid total paralysis.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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How does your sense of place influence your artwork?

Grain elevators, Buffalo, NY, 18X24 in a handmade cherry frame. $2318 includes shipping in continental US.

My hometown of Buffalo, NY, is a great place to be from. I often mention it, especially when it’s snowing.

Buffalo is paradoxical: blue-collar and yet elegant, blighted but historic, crime-ridden and yet pastoral. There’s nature everywhere, from the Olmsted-designed parks to the urban prairie that has replaced the immigrant neighborhoods of the 19th and 20th century. (Since my own people came through those streets, I have mixed feelings about this.)

The grain elevator was born in Buffalo. Grain elevators made Buffalo the largest grain-shipping port in the world in just 15 short years. Those elevators also died there, when the opening of the Welland Canal rendered grain cross-docking obsolete. Finding an adaptive reuse for these buildings has been a chronic challenge. It’s like keeping Grandma’s giant harmonium in your living room—historically important, but taking up a lot of space that could have had more practical use.

My home city spent the second half of the twentieth century on its uppers. That’s when I lived there, so that’s the Buffalo that’s shaped me.

Main Street, Owl’s Head, oil on archival canvasboard, $1623 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Direct and indirect

In some ways, that influence was direct, as in the art I saw at the former Albright-Knox Art Museum and the Canadian Group of Seven painters from just over the river. With two Great Lakes in my backyard, I couldn’t help but love all things nautical. In other ways the influences were indirect. My hometown is multicultural, street-smart, feisty and frugal. I am too.

Inevitably, there were also negative influences. After fifty years of economic contraction, there was an expectation of failure; that’s one big reason the Bills have always been so beloved. There were strong cultural, religious, and familial expectations that kept people in place. We left because there were no jobs, but I would probably never have become a professional painter had I stayed.

Coal Seam, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I live on the Maine coast now, where there are many professional artists. As we all know, iron sharpens iron. The color is clearer and brighter, the light is sublime, but, alas, there’s little cultural diversity. Maine is the whitest state in the nation.

What are the cultural expectations of the place you currently live? The place you’re from? How are they expressed in your work?

Interpretation

Of course, everything I wrote above is my interpretation. I have friends and family who would loudly disagree with my characterization, if they read this blog.

A Woodlot of her own, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Personal connection

I’ve never found it difficult to paint grain elevators or urban clutter. They’re part of my cultural heritage. I can paint my own kids and grandkids; they’re unalloyed joy. But I started a painting last year, as yet unfinished, that I thought would be a sentimental look at my childhood. Instead, it dredged up some difficult, long-suppressed memories. That’s probably why it isn’t finished.

Have you ever been ambushed by a painting? Have you been able to work your visceral response into the canvas, or as with me, has it foxed you? To a lesser degree, how do your emotions color the less-fraught things you paint? That’s a question I can’t really answer, so I’m looking for inspiration here.

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How to choose wall art

High Surf, 12X16, oil on prepared birch painting surface, $1159 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

As I told you last week, I’m in Albany wrasslin’ my grandson while my daughter is in hospital. My granddaughter has arrived. She’s in the NICU now, and covered with the usual tubes, wires and tapes. I can’t say who she looks like, but she cries like a baa-lamb and grasps her daddy’s finger. Her mom is being tapered off her hospital drugs, so I think we’ve turned a corner. Thank you all for your kind thoughts and prayers.

Buy a painting to match your sofa

“Art should make you think and feel. It doesn’t have to match your couch,” has been a catchphrase for as long as I can remember. But why shouldn’t art match your furnishings? You probably chose them because you liked them, and you’re likely to like a painting that coordinates with them for the same reason.

Surf’s Up is 12X16, on a prepared birch surface. $1159 includes shipping and handling in the Continental US.

That doesn’t mean a painting should literally match your couch, but it’s okay if they share touchpoints. Still, I’ve noticed that even the most talented designers among my collectors buy art based on how it resonates with them, rather than what it matches. Dare to be inventive; traditional painting can match contemporary spaces and vice-versa.

The famed collector Dr. Albert Barnes believed grouping paintings in terms of light, space, color and line could create a whole that was greater than the sum of its parts. (This is why the Barnes Foundation‘s indenture of trust stipulated that the paintings in the collection be kept “in exactly the places they are,” leading to years of legal wrangling.) Some paintings just look better with others, and the only way to know is to pair them and see what happens.

The pine nursery (Madawaska Pond), 12X16, oil on canvasboard, available.

Buy a painting because you love it, but when you go to hang it, consider:

Color: I once had a room with a red ceiling. It cast such a warm reflection on the room that cool colors were washed out. It made more sense to hang landscapes in another room.

Size: It would be absurd to place a 6”x8” painting in solitary splendor on a 12’ wall, and an oversized painting can dwarf a small living space. A good rule of thumb is that a painting should take up 60-75% of the allotted space, such as above your couch or bed. However, there are times when breaking that rule can work spectacularly.

Purpose: I’ve learned from personal experience that a nude in the dining room might embarrass your family. “Could we please take it down for Thanksgiving?” one of my kids asked.

Scale: While there’s some truth to the adage that a painting should read as well at 30 feet as 3 feet, there are some works (like etchings or botanical prints) for which that makes no sense. They need to be hung where they can be appreciated up close, like in an office or, yes, a powder room.

Mood: I have a vibrant multimedia piece by Barbra Whitten that’s destined to my kitchen. It’s based on a layered salad and will sing in that light, airy space. It joins a nocturne by Chrissy Pahucki of her daughter making s’mores over a fire. My living spaces have high-chroma paintings by Chrissy Nickerson, Poppy Balser, Tom Conner, Bruce McMillan and Bruce Bundock, among others. The only paintings in my bedroom are of family members.

Of course, I’m constantly shuffling paintings as I acquire new art. I have another Tom Conner and a watercolor by Barbara Tapp that need homes. I don’t consciously choose paintings that meet the purpose of the room, but it seems to end up that way.

Frames: I don’t think there’s a specific frame that matches a particular painting style; it’s more about aligning with your room’s design. If you love the painting but hate the frame, ask the artist for the price unframed. He or she will almost always accommodate that.

Pensive 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Don’t forget, there’s $100 off any painting on my website, from now until the end of the year. Just use the code XMAS100.

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Monday Morning Art School: digital reproduction

Seafoam, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed.

I get several messages a week asking me if I’m interested in selling my paintings as NFTs. My answer is that paintings are one-off tactile objects, not digital assets. Not that the shills for NFTs like taking no for an answer, but NFTs and fine art don’t really mix.

That doesn’t mean that you can’t learn a lot by looking at paintings online. The world has been immeasurably enriched by museums opening their collections on the internet. For example, the 99% of people who will never see Rembrandt van Rijn’s The Night Watch in person can still look at it brushstroke-by-brushstroke on the Rijksmuseum website. And the digital world has had a remarkable democratizing influence on the sale and distribution of contemporary art and music.

Dawn Wind, Twin Lights, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping and handling in the continental US.

But a digital image of a painting is never the same as the real thing. Recent research using Johannes Vermeer’s Girl with a Pearl Earring may validate this argument. Using electroencephalograms (EEG), researchers at the Mauritshuis in the Netherlands demonstrated that looking at actual paintings stimulates the brain differently than looking at reproductions. “The viewer’s emotional response is ten times stronger when they are face to face with the painting in the museum,” they reported.

Vermeer is what’s known as a linear painter, which means he focused on clarity, modeling, structure, and detail. That’s in contrast to painterliness, which means work that is less controlled, relying more on brushwork and expression. The researchers got similar results from the works of two other Dutch Golden Age painters, Rembrandt van Rijn, who is considered painterly, and Willem Van Honthorst, another linear painter. Apparently, it was the paint itself that mattered, not how it was applied.

The Wave, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869, includes shipping in continental US.

You may recognize this composition

Researchers also reported a ‘sustained attentional loop’ unique to The Girl with the Pearl Earring. People who’ve studied composition will recognize this as a classic triangle composition, a series of focal points designed to engage the viewer. While this composition has been used throughout art history, The Girl with the Pearl Earring delivers it as a quick one-two-three punch-up—lips, eye, earring.

More questions

This was a very small study of a very narrow period in art history, but it raises interesting questions. Would similar experiments on a broader range of art and artists show us, for example, whether other periods of art fare better or worse in reproductions? Would that information help us determine whether one kind of painting is objectively better than another?

The Girl with the Pearl Earring and Mona Lisa are both superstar paintings, known by almost everyone. However, Mona Lisa is almost unviewable in real life, due to the immense crowds thronging its gallery. If similar responses were recorded at the Louvre, would that mean that part of the response to The Girl with the Pearl Earring was due to celebrity?

Nighttime at Clam Cove, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, $696 unframed.

An aside about scams

Because my phone number and email address are on my website, I get more than my share of scammy messages. I thought I was expert at weeding through them. This week, one of my students apparently texted me, asking me to follow her new Instagram store. When the texter asked me to send back information, I checked the phone number against my records and realized it was a clone.

What shocked me was that the bot seemed to have some idea of my relationship with my student. Was that AI or a lucky guess? I don’t know, but you can never be too careful.

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