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Tag: art

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What is art?

This 9X12 painting of spring blossoms in Thomaston is one of four paintings I delivered to the Red Barn Gallery in Thomaston. They’ll be there until August 6, 2023.

‘What is art?’ is a deceptively simple question. I come down hard on the argument that art is any creative impulse that is utterly useless in practical terms. Art is created primarily for aesthetic, intellectual or expressive purposes. It evokes emotions, conveys ideas and, hopefully, provokes thought.

Craft, on the other hand, is traditionally used to describe work that serves a practical purpose. Of course, the line between art and craft is hopelessly vague and jagged. There was no legitimate purpose served by the exquisite illumination of the Lindisfarne Gospels; the stories were read out to an audience who probably couldn’t read and never had a chance to look at the pictures. The illumination was just a celebration of the magnificence of the Good News. But we call those unknown artists ‘medieval craftsmen.’

Red House, Monhegan, 12X16, oil on canvas, is one of four paintings I delivered to Red Barn Gallery in Port Clyde. They’ll be there until August 6.

In late medieval Europe, tapestry was the central, most expensive figurative medium. Tapestries often showed complicated Biblical, allegorical or historical scenes. They were full of beautifully drawn figures in well-drafted settings.

These immense wall hangings were made in large workshops under the aegis of a master artist. Their production was not materially different from the painting workshops that would follow in the Renaissance. However, tapestry was based on two very practical crafts, weaving and needlework. We’ve further muddied the waters by assuming that the magnificent tapestries of our ancestors were primarily to keep drafts down. We call tapestry a craft, even though its technical demands are at least equal to those of painting.

Hans Holbein traipsed all over Europe to paint portraits of prospective brides for Henry VIII. (The king was terribly disappointed in Anne of Cleves when he saw her in the flesh, so much that the marriage was unconsummated. But he was the only person who thought her homely, so we’ll never know if Holbein flattered her or if Henry was unreasonable.)

Holbein’s paintings were made for a highly practical application, but they’re among the great paintings of the western canon. Nobody would call them craft.

Rockport Opera House, 14X18, is one of four paintings I delivered to Red Barn Gallery in Port Clyde. They’ll be there until August 6.

Consider three tiny figurines, exactly the same. The first was made as a doll for a child. It’s by our modern lights a craft object. The second was made to cast a spell upon an unlucky recipient. That’s also a craft object. The third was made for no reason other than that its maker thought it was a good idea. That’s an art object.

I may not like a Maurizio Cattelan‘s Comedian (the infamous banana taped to a wall) but it provoked a response and a lot of conversation. That’s one of the fundamental purposes of art. Could I have enraged as many people with a landscape painting? Hardly.

A large part of the game Warhammer 40,000 is painting miniatures. Is that a craft, because it’s for a game, or art, because it’s totally useless? Is building a model of Frederic Church‘s Olana in The Sims, as my daft daughter is doing, art or craft?

I’ve spent a few weeks at the Red Barn Gallery in Port Clyde contemplating a vivid and sublime Eric Jacobsen painting. It has been a true aesthetic pleasure. Beauty is something both traditional art and craft do magnificently. It’s something a banana taped to the wall (and much other modern art) fail at. To divorce aesthetics from art is as foolish as trying to draw a line between art and craft.

We’d love to have you enter this year’s 10X10 show. Details below.

Speaking of the Red Barn Gallery, intake for the annual 10X10 show starts this Thursday. It’s a juried show that runs from August 11-September 1. Artists can submit up to three works, and the fee is $15/per submission. The application form is here.

I’ll be there on Thursday, and I’d love to see you!

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Art without religion

Painting of Gaáč‡eƛa riding on his Indian rat or bandicoot, c. 1820, courtesy British Museum

It has always baffled me that an art historian is required to learn German, French, or Italian but not to study religious history. Religious paintings comprise the bulk of art through the ages, from the shamanistic cave art of paleolithic man right up to the 18th century. That’s not just true for Christendom, but for every culture worldwide. Art is a primary way people have explored the meaning of their existence, and that is the fundamental question of religion.

I can only speak for my own culture, but my own grounding in Christianity makes reading western paintings easy. I do not need stories and symbols explained to me; even deeply buried allegorical references make sense without a lot of clarification.

Ladder of Divine Ascent, 12th century, icon, courtesy Saint Catherine’s Monastery, Egypt

(That’s also true, by the way, for paintings based on Greco-Roman myth, because we learned those stories in school. Today I wonder why they spent so much time on them, but apparently there was a lot more time in the school day back before STEM. Peter Paul Rubens had it right when he painted those fat gods and goddesses as cartoon characters.)

I’ve often wondered how students of art history read the symbols in religious art when they don’t have a grounding in the thinking underlying them. Art historians are famous for their capacity to pontificate. In the post-church era, how can their students discern what in all that blather is reasonable and what is nonsense?

Thangka Depicting Vajrabhairava, ca. 1740, courtesy Sotheby’s

Go back in time with me to my first visit to the Rubin Museum of Himalayan and central Asian art. Tibetan art is overwhelmingly religious and conservative and, I suspect, cautionary. The Tārās are, like the Greco-Roman gods, partly personifications, or representations of abstract ideas in the form of personages. Looking at the work totally divorced from its religious underpinnings, all I saw were five floors of ferocious figurines.

I suppose my response was like a non-Christian’s reading of a crucifixion painting. They can be frightening, especially in a culture as divorced from death as we are. However, crucifixion was an historical reality running from pre-Roman times to the modern world (it’s still a rare but legal form of punishment in parts of the world). To the Christian, the crucifixion of Jesus represents the absolute low point of the story, but it also points to the ultimate redemption of humanity.

My art-historian goddaughter was raised in a traditional Chinese household, so Tibetan house shrines don’t seem that strange to her. She was able to explain the rough outlines of the Tārā permutations to me. I still wouldn’t want any of it in my house, but, then again, I wouldn’t want The Martyrdom of Saint Erasmus by Dieric Bouts in my house, either.

Tiles from the courtyard of the SĂŒleymaniye Mosque in Istanbul, Turkey, c. 1557

I’m not an art historian, just a simple painter who loves paintings. And I think it’s important that I understand those works from the viewpoint of the artist. So when I read Breaking a taboo: religion is being invited into three major museums, my first reaction was, “it’s about time.” Art should never have been divorced from its cultural underpinnings in the first place. Its absence reflects a longstanding, anti-religious bias on the part of academia.

We’ve had a century or more of sneering at religion and the faithful. Are there any art historians left who are qualified to interpret art in the language and culture in which it was made? Where’s Sister Wendy when we need her?

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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I’m learning a new art form

I’m slowly learning to act naturally in front of the camera. It’s been a difficult process.

The ancient Greeks used Ï€ÎżÎŻÎ·ÎŒÎ± (poiēma) to describe workmanship. It comes down to English as poem and poetry. Poesis, which means bringing something into being that did not exist before, is another derivative.

It’s no surprise that ancient Greeks thought of creativity in poetic terms; they were masters of verse. We do the same thing today, letting language romp across various art forms willy-nilly. Composition and dissonance, for example, mean the same thing to a musician as to a painter.

That’s because the structure of art is oddly consistent across genres. My bass player husband can pick up any string instrument and coax decent sound from it, because the principles are universal.

There are exceptions, of course. “What is the equivalent of a sketch in photography?” Ron Andrews mused in response to this post. Ron’s right about static photography not needing sketches, but storyboards are just sketches for moving pictures.

The two classes I have finished so far; number three should join them shortly.

You don’t know what you don’t know

At the beginning of this year, I set out to make a series of online classes about painting. I want to get through the seven steps of a painting by the end of this year. I’m almost done with step three, composition. It’s been a doozy. The lesson is long and complex, but so is the subject of composition.

Just the brain dump would be challenging enough. On top of that, I’m still learning the medium. I have no director, so I’m learning to speak slowly and naturally to a camera in an empty room. I’m learning to do voice-overs and tinkering with ways to demonstrate technique. I’ve learned to edit audio and video on three different platforms.

Then there are the exercises and quizzes. To write them is easy; to make them work interactively online is more difficult. Thank goodness for Laura Boucher. She’s my operations manager, daughter, and software guru.

Then there’s Monday Morning Art School, which is free, of course.

Look to the experts

I don’t watch television or movies and I’m too old for Tik-Tok. To overcome this, Laura has me studying YouTube videos. Sandi Brock is a middle-aged sheep farmer from Ontario with close to a million subscribers. She’s an improbable influencer. I learn a lot from her.

The most liberating lesson is that people really don’t care about my flat Buffalo accent or wrinkles. To some extent, the artifice of perfection is irrelevant in contemporary social media. People find their own tribe and ignore the rest.

Painters today have incredible resources compared to the last century. My father taught me to paint, but for most people, learning opportunities were limited to what the local art gallery had on offer. If, like Bob Ross, you were interested in realism in a town where abstraction was king, tough. You were out of luck.

Today you can go online and study with just about anyone, including me. You’re the captain of your own ship, for good or ill.

I have already made a few hundred ‘resources’ for this online class. I’m getting better at it as I go along.

I’m a convert

When I was young, I took voice lessons. I still love to sing, but my voice is a mess. Right now, I’m looking for a place to take voice lessons online. The beauty of this scheme is that I don’t need to show up at 6 PM on Tuesdays; I can do the lessons whenever I want.

Three years ago, at the start of COVID, I fought the idea of teaching online. Today I’m a convert. The proof is in the pudding, and my Zoom classes have proven more effective than ‘real life’ classes in creating professional artists, and almost as effective as intensive workshops.

And that’s why I’m, at age 64, learning a whole new form of Ï€ÎżÎŻÎ·ÏƒÎčς. The medium may change, but the impulses of creation are universal.

So tell me in the comments, what new skill are you working on?

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Investing in art

Early Spring on Beech Hill, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas, 12X16, $1449 framed includes shipping in continental US.

In June of 1975, my husband paid $285 for a Fender Precision Bass. He spent the whole of his high school graduation money on it. For a 16-year-old about to start his first summer job and then go off to college, that was a very big deal.

“If I had invested that money
” he mused recently.

That’s a difficult question to answer. Had he put it in an S&P 500 index fund and reinvested all the dividends and not had to pay fees, he’d have about $60,000 right now. Of course, that is a theoretical ideal; in practice, it would have been impossible. There weren’t index funds available in June, 1975. Most working people had pensions, and the 401K hadn’t even been invented yet. In 1980, the first year the SEC asked the question, only 6% of American households had mutual funds. Our parents kept their savings in banks.

In a savings account, that $285 would have earned
 pretty much nothing. Assuming it had survived the depredations of three subsequent college degrees and four children, today that $285 would be worth $1,599.62. Even in its heavily-used condition, the bass is worth much more than that.

That’s disregarding the money he’s made with it. Although he now plays in church, at times he supported us with that guitar. But that really misses the point.

Sea Fog over Castine, Carol L. Douglas, 9X12, $869 framed includes shipping in continental US.

Making art is transformative

“You wouldn’t be the person you are today,” I told him. He’s played that instrument for 48 years-sometimes in intense bursts of creativity, at other times in stolen moments in an otherwise busy life. But it’s central to the way his mind works.

Back in 1975, I didn’t have $285. If I had I’d have banked it. I don’t think frugality is a bad trait, but in this instance, I’d have been dead wrong. There are purchases that are self-indulgent, and other purchases-investments, really-that pay off many times over.

The Pine Tree State, 6X8, oil on canvasboard, $435 framed and including shipping in continental US.

How does this apply to the visual arts?

First, there’s the question of materials. My student Diane wants to try pastels. She could buy a cheap kit at a department store for under $30, but it’s a waste of money. She’d walk away frustrated and not understanding the first thing about the seductive immediacy of pastels. If she wants to try them, she needs the proper materials.

I gave her a list: Unison pastels in a starter kit and a landscape kit, paper, and hard pastels. Even at that minimum level, that’s more than a hundred bucks. That hurt to tell her. But it’s an investment in learning and Diane is happy.

Blueberry barrens, Clary Hill, oil on canvas, 24X36, $3985 framed, includes shipping in continental US.

Then there’s the question of hanging art on your walls. I sometimes look at the prices of the so-called ‘art’ at my local Home Goods and wince. It’s like those cheap pastel kits-a simulacrum of the real thing. In a few years, it will be added to the local landfill.

Art, if it’s chosen well, is not just something to look at. It’s an investment that appreciates over time. That’s particularly true of the work of women artists on the secondary market, which is currently appreciating faster than their male peers’. And unlike my Vanguard account (at the moment) the art on our walls brings me consistent, great joy.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Ecotourism and art

Painting aboard schooner American Eagle.

The track up Beech Hill is my daily morning routine. Occasionally I run across C-, who’s a co-owner of an elegant windjammer plying Penobscot Bay.

As you know, I teach two watercolor workshops each year aboard the schooner American Eagle. These workshops combine two things I love: sailing and painting. I get to do them without the responsibility of owning a boat, and my students get to do them without the responsibility of carrying their gear. (I supply it.)

I’m always thinking about ways to get more people excited about the combination of painting and sailing, because I can’t imagine anything better. Windjammers tend to attract older people, and that’s great, except that I don’t really understand why younger people don’t love them too.

“I had an idea that windjamming is the natural extension of eco-tourism,” I told C- the other day. “But I can’t figure out a way that you could stack 18 kayaks on your deck. They wouldn’t fit.”

“We don’t have to,” she pointed out. “The boats themselves are the original form of ecotourism.”

That’s my girl! American Eagle modeled for this painting, called Breaking Storm, 30X48, oil on linen, $5,579.00 including shipping in continental US.

What is ecotourism?

Ecotourism is defined as “responsible travel to natural areas that conserves the environment, sustains the well-being of the local people, and involves interpretation and education.”*

Schooners rely on wind power to glide silently through the sea; hence their moniker of ‘windjammers.’ We pass ledge and small islands where sea birds and eagles nest. I’ve seen sea otters, dolphins, and, memorably, a whale breaching off Rockland harbor last fall.

Because American Eagle carries several smaller vessels, including a seine boat, we can row to uninhabited islands, which we visit on a carry-in, carry-out basis. And those interested in studying quaint, endangered local cultures need look no farther than the lobstermen of coastal Maine.

Lobster pound, 14X18, oil on canvas, $1,594.00 framed, includes shipping in the continental US. G**gle recently disapproved this image because it violates their policy. “Local legal requirements and safety standards (live animals).”

So why hasn’t the windjammer industry tapped into the $200 billion annual ecotourism market? I suspect it is because we believe that to see something exotic, you must go overseas. Having traveled extensively, I know this is nonsense. New Englanders and Nevadans may-nominally-share the same language, but we live in very different physical, economic and cultural communities. Ours is a vast country, twice as large as the EU. It has amazing diversity, including more than 95,000 miles of coastline.

Maine’s little piece of that includes 17 million acres of forestland and 3,500 miles of rocky coast. There are more than 3000 sea islands (and who knows how many on inland lakes). Only about 200 have more than four structures, meaning that the whole coastline is covered with forestland, bluffs, cliffs, and coves-and all the wildlife that goes with that.

As a painter, I find that irresistible, and I’m not alone. That’s why the Maine coast is infested with artists and galleries.

The Wave, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping in continental US. You can tell it was painted from a boat, rather than from shore, because the wave isn’t horizontal.

Where happiness lies

“A wandering mind is an unhappy mind,” wrote Matthew Killingsworth and Daniel Gilbert. We’re happiest when we’re living in the moment, totally focused on what we’re doing. A wandering person, on the other hand, tends to be a sublimely happy soul. New experiences sharpen our focus in a way that material goods can’t. Soon after they’re purchased, our new car, phone or dress fade into the background; in fact, they’re only notable if there is a story to their acquisition.

Psychologists tells us that experiences bring people more enduring happiness than do possessions. Which, I suppose, is why I love the paintings I’ve done from the deck of American Eagle so much. They are treasured memories of happy days.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Art-vs.-Life is a false dichotomy

High Plains, 8x10, oil on canvas, available unframed, $522

By now, most of us have read about two Just Stop Oil activists who threw tomato soup over Vincent van Gogh’s Sunflowers at the National Gallery in London. They’re part of a growing trend of annoying young people gluing themselves to the frames of great art and gallery walls in protest against petroleum culture.

They ought to be gluing themselves to a gas pump where they’d be addressing their actual enemy; oil paintings are generally made with flax-seed oil. However, they’d doubtless be ignored or worse, as their sit-down protests in roads have mostly just infuriated British drivers. In a gallery, they’re sure to get attention.

Sedona, 8X10, oil on canvas, Carol Douglas, private collection

“What is worth more, art or life?” said one of the lasses, Phoebe Plummer, 21, from London. “Is it worth more than food? More than justice? Are you more concerned about the protection of a painting or the protection of our planet and people?

Mankind has always recognized that there’s a physical world and a non-physical world and that the borders are fuzzy. Descartes wrote “cogito, ergo sum” (I think, therefore I am) to prove to himself that he really existed. Cartesian dualism rests on the idea that there are tangible things, and there are intangible things, and that we humans are a combination of the two. Generations of spotty teenagers, myself included, have pondered Descartes’ question. The idea that reality isn’t real is tailor-made for adolescents.

Apparently, Plummer missed all that. Otherwise, she’d know that art isn’t separate from life any more than food or justice are. It’s part of thinking, and that’s part of life as much as checking the gas meter.

Van Gogh was just 37 years old when he died, either by suicide or murder. The vast majority of his 900 paintings were finished in the last two years of life as he grappled with crippling mental illness. That period of suffering paradoxically gave us a legacy of paintings that’s unparalleled in human history. Through his work, Van Gogh lives on.

The Rocks Remain, 16X20, is one of two pictures going with me to Sedona Arts Center. I'll post a better photo later.

I’m a reader. That takes me to alternate worlds and different viewpoints and realities, all possible through the artistry of the writer. Are those worlds more or less real than my physical one? The answer, I suppose, depends on when you ask me.

Marcel Proust addressed this question in Remembrance of Things Past, that monumental opus that we all talk about but seldom read. “(A)s many original artists as there are, so many worlds are at our disposal, differing more widely from each other than those which roll round the infinite and which, whether their name be Rembrandt or Vermeer, send us their unique rays many centuries after the hearth from which they emanate is extinguished.” The knowledge thus gained, he said, is something different from the “practical ends which we falsely call life.”

Rim Light, 16X20, is one of two paintings going with me to Sedona. I'll post a better image later.

It's an unexamined life that makes us so prone to excess consumption, exacerbating the petroleum problem. By no measures are American adults healthy. More than 37 million of us take antidepressants, more than 40% of us are obese, and 77% of us worry about money. A little more reading, writing, drawing, painting and thinking and a little less shopping would make us all happier.

By the way, the wise old souls at the National Gallery had protected the painting, and only the frame sustained minor damage.

I’m writing this en route to Sedona, AZ, for the 18th annual Sedona Plein Air Festival. It’s the last event of my season, and I’m excited about all the rocks I get to paint this coming week!