Why are you painting? Correct answer: Why not?! We tend to focus on technical stuff – draftsmanship, composition, color, values but not the human stuff – emotions, moods, meaning, energy, joy. But painting is all that [...]
A three-time cancer survivor, artist Suzi Long’s motto is Only those who risk going too far know how far it is possible to go. “You could say I went rogue when I moved into the [...]
Among many other accomplishments, Canadian artist Claude Cormier made “paintings” with stuffed animals. From across the room, Cormier’s massive work Stuffed Animals, installed at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art, reads like a colorful abstraction. [...]
Realist painter David Leffel’s work has been popular for decades, and he’s been teaching students his technique for just as long. Using an “all-in-one-go” style of direct painting called “alla prima,” Leffel combined the look [...]
It is recognized as one of the greatest American paintings ever made. The painting is by Thomas Eakins (American, 1844–1916) and it is known as The Gross Clinic (or Portrait of Dr. Samuel D. Gross, as [...]
When I was an art director in the advertising field, panic deadlines seemed to squeeze out the best creative ideas from myself and my other advertising coworkers. The best ideas often got going sometime after [...]
Think plein air in Maine, and chances are you’ll think “Monhegan.” But before that rock-bound island community took the crown, another and more accessible locale was king – the southern Maine town of Ogunquit, which [...]
What makes an award-winning painting? Lots of things, but subject matter, at least, can be as varied as you can imagine. Among the winning paintings that Master Artist Kathleen Dunphy selected for the June 2024 PleinAir Salon [...]
In Karen Margulis’s pastel painting “Color by the Sea,” above, the artist composes an eclectic (and potentially clashing) mix of hues. At a glance, we get a playful jumble of colors, a combination of cool [...]
What is it about William Nicholson’s painting The Lustre Bowl with Green Peas that impresses itself on the imagination and memory? Somehow Sir William Nicholson’s “simple” still life transforms just three everyday items – a [...]
