In this painting by Edward Gordon, we find ourselves in a fine, presumably Victorian house by the sea, perhaps somewhere on the coast of Maine. The open window looks out over a veranda overhanging the [...]

They say there isn’t a major museum in the world that doesn’t own counterfeit works, some even misattributed to very famous artists (e.g. by a recent count, 20% of all art in museums in the [...]

Five Ways I Recharge My Creative Batteries By Guest Contributor PAT FIORELLO If you’ve been painting for any length of time, you know it’s natural to go through periods of great energy and inspiration and other [...]

Can a landscape be epic?  That’s the question RISD professor and artist-printmaker Nancy Friese asks in a brief essay on the painting titled “Rain on the River,” created in 1908 by a young American “Ashcan [...]

“We do what we must, and call it the best names we can, and would fain have the praise of having intended the result which ensues.” – Emerson (Experience) The key is to be wild but [...]

Caravaggio’s masterful “The Inspiration of Saint Matthew” remains a priceless treasure of European art. However, it wasn’t universally admired and almost didn’t get hung – or painted – at all.  As you can see from [...]

Don’t let a lack of knowledge of composition hold you back from making better paintings. The key to developing an intuitive understanding of composition is not to memorize individual compositions but to internalize dynamic design.  [...]

In an article published not too long ago in The Atlantic, Arthur C. Brooks argued that art is as important to human helath as exercise and good nutrition. Art needn’t be primarily an escapist activity [...]

When artists refer to “quality of line,” part of what’s meant is sensitivity to the subject as well as how the line is drawn. The heaviness or lightness of pressure, the varied thickness or thinness, [...]