The quote is innocent enough: Art’s true purpose is not to portray but to evoke. If you think about what that means though, it’s saying that essentially, art is not about depicting the observable world. [...]

Johannes Vermeer’s The Art of Painting (c.1668) invites us to see in his work much more than consummate skill and flawless technique for capturing diffuse light from an unseen window (though … THERE’S THAT!). Johannes Vermeer, The [...]

Almost literally luminous, the seascapes of 19th century American artist William Trost Richards (1833 – 1905) have earned an honored place in the history of American landscape painting.  William Trost Richards’ seascapes are introspective paintings, emotionally [...]

“The artist must work so hard, so long, that a brain develops and lives, all of itself, in his fingers …. The artist must not think of critical rewards or money he will get for [...]

Above image licensed under  CC BY-NC-ND. An endless dream of timeless summer days hums in the warm greens and hazy distances that we inhabit as we gaze at the painting by JMW Turner above. It’s [...]

Andrew Wyeth (1917-2009) is often celebrated for his realism and his technique, particularly his meticulous details such as blades of grass, tiny crevices, subtle wear, or grains of sand. What’s not as often discussed is [...]

Ryan S. Brown is an American painter in the naturalist tradition. After graduating BYU, Ryan went on to study classical painting in Florence, Italy, at the Florence Academy of Art, where upon graduation he won the [...]

For more on this painting, go here.  We continue our look at the first exciting period of “homegrown” art and ask the question, What happened to the Hudson River School with yet another question: What [...]

Dave Santillanes, 9th Annual PleinAir Salon Grand Prize winner, has revealed his selections for the May 2025 PleinAir Salon art competition. Scroll down to see the winning paintings and read Dave’s comments on his top picks. 1st Place [...]

Gouache, or opaque watercolor, is a water-medium paint, like watercolor, that dries opaque, like acrylic or oil. It uses similar natural and inert pigment material, but its binder isn't a natural oil like linseed, safflower, or [...]