The Last Minute (Artists’) Gift Guide
“All art is quite useless,” wrote Oscar Wilde, by which I think he meant that art is one of the few things in a society in love with “productivity” and “being practical” that can still [...]
The Hudson River School in 4 Themes
1. The Sublime and the Picturesque (Romanticism) Understanding the Hudson River School starts with recognizing the European influence. The artist and early environmentalist Thomas Cole (1801–1848) founded the influential 19th-century art movement known as the [...]
Painting Roses with Georgia O’Keeffe
A Rose is a Rose is …. potentially so much more. Georgia O’Keefe was a master at observing the abstract forms in nature and translating them into fascinating combinations of modernist abstraction and natural forms [...]
“The Quiet of the Landscape”
Oil painter Julie Davis, AIS, AWA, OPA has a favorite quote from Winston Churchill that hints at her philosophy of painting: "Obviously, then, armed with a paint-box, one cannot be bored, one cannot be left [...]
Exuberance and Honesty
Few artists in history have had such a wide-ranging impact on art and culture as Henri Matisse. What a bold, exuberant spirit of an artist! We’re fortunate that Matisse was also a thoughtful and prolific writer who often reflected [...]
The Poetry of Rembrandt’s Late Self Portraits
Who, with any feeling for the depths of humanity, can resist that bottomless gaze peering across the centuries from the self-portraits Rembrandt painted in old age? Great works of art, according to Susan Sontag, provide [...]
On Another Planet with Georgia O’Keeffe
This striking painting by Georgia O’Keeffe strikes one as a near-total abstraction. It’s severe, mysterious, threatening – one thinks of the skin of some prehistoric creature, a spine and ribcage, a whale ballet, heaps and [...]
Majestic Landscape Sweeps Monthly Salon
Texas artist Kyle Ma clinched this month’s PleinAir™ Salon with a 36 x 36 in. oil painting titled “Cathedral Wash.” The canvas depicts a popular riverbed trail that leads to the Colorado River and on [...]
A Windfall of Gorgeous American Paintings
The Fenimore Art Museum in Cooperstown, NY has acquired an impressive trove of 27 oil paintings by a stellar collection of well-known classic American artists: Albert Bierstadt, Theodore Earl Butler, Mary Cassatt, William Merritt Chase, [...]
Lessons from Delacroix
French painter Eugene Delacroix’s (1798 – 1863) work epitomizes the setting-free of painting from the strict classical ideals of the Academy that had come before. From an artist’s inside view, we can see Delacroix’s technique [...]