Watch Me Paint: World-Class Art, World-Class Instruction
In a world obsessed with rawness, you could do worse than studying the Luminists. Lumber Schooners at Evening on Penobscot Bay, 1863, Fitz Henry Lane, courtesy National Gallery of Art. The setting for this painting is, quite literally, out my back door. Luminism is a distinctly American painting movement of the middle of the 19th century. It was chiefly …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: the power of light”
How does one find one’s purpose as an artist? Should we build that into how we think about our work? Ravening Wolves, 24X30, oil on canvas, is as close as I get to didacticism these days. “How have you grown as a painter in the last ten years?” a student asked me. My drawing and brushwork …
The human brain has an unfortunate tendency to skip over the parts of a plan it doesn’t like. Desert long view, 9X12, oil on canvasboard, $696 unframed. I never expected to be flying back from my workshop in Sedona with four wet canvases, so I only brought a two-canvas PanelPak. Whoops, bad planning—but it was …
The line between art and craft is a modern one, and it’s resulted in banal, boorish and ultimately meaningless work being foisted on us as art. Carved cravat, c. 1690, Grinling Gibbons, courtesy Victoria & Albert Museum “Was Grinling Gibbons an artist or a craftsman?” a student asked. It’s a fascinating question, and one that …
Painters spend lots of time thinking about the subtractive color system. We spend very little time thinking about the additive system. That’s a mistake, because this is the color of light. A deer I painted years ago as a demonstration for my class. Shadows are the complement of the morning light. Every artist is familiar …
Continue reading “Monday Morning Art School: the color of darkness”
Mastery is a moving target. Occasional moments of greatness are a byproduct of that continuing struggle. Autumn farm, evening blues, oil on archival canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas “How @#$% long does it take great painters to learn to paint?” asked a student recently, with only the slightest hint of frustration in his voice. “I’m not …
Continue reading “How long did it take you to become a genius, anyway?”
Forget the fairy-lights; a good nocturne follows the same rules as any good painting. Hunter’s Supper, c. 1909, Frederic Remington, courtesy National Cowboy and Western Heritage Museum Nocturne is a term appropriated by James Abbott McNeill Whistler from music. Whistler used it to title works that evoked the sensation of nighttime or twilight. It didn’t mean just any …
A friend is a friend, and love is love, no matter if it comes by airmail or through the internet, or in person. My mother and her cousin Gabriel on her last trip to Australia. My brother gave me a thumb drive containing about 500 scanned slides from my childhood. They’re very interesting, but they …
That’s a question that operates on both the technical and the spiritual planes. Beautiful Dream, oil on canvasboard, 12X16, $1449 framed. Tom Root recently attempted to make a pithy saying about simplification. “It’s not simplification, it’s essentialization,” he wrote. While that’s unlikely to be printed on tee-shirts, it does get to the nub of the matter. …
It’s immediate and visceral, in a way that incorporates the lessons of abstract-expressionism, but it’s also grounded in reality. In short, it’s painting for our times. Spring Greens, oil on canvasboard, 8X10, $652 in a plein air frame. Last week Mary Byrom asked me, “Why is plein air painting significant?” I was at a loss …