First, congratulate yourself for even getting as far as contemplating doing this: painting nature as it appears to your mind and senses is an extraordinary way of relating to yourself and the world! It begins [...]

“Dry and thirsty, a paintbrush pokes its nose into water, then ground inkstone, and swells with the abundance of expressive potential.” So begins a lively essay on contemporary Chinese painter the late Wu Guanzhong written [...]

Last week we looked at a number of paintings in which artist painted themselves painting themselves. Several of you wrote in to call my attention to a classic I’d forgotten about – Norman Rockwell’s Triple [...]

Here’s a plein air strategy to help make the overwhelm manageable: Start with feeling – and then immediately think DESIGN. If you’ve never attended PACE before, if you’ve never painted outside before – the thing [...]

Why paint?  Why not?! Who says you need a mission or a brand or a purpose or a plan? Making art is just one of those things that happy humans do. Painting “just because” is [...]

An occasional series all about analyzing what makes paintings beautiful, iconic, memorable, or effective. Painters, beginners and masters alike, make leaps and bounds by studying creative triumphs of the art. What kind of principles, techniques, [...]

What do people mean by the “expressive landscape”?  Usually, it’s landscape painting that prioritizes the qualities of the paint over paint’s ability to represent what the eye sees. It can also refer to landscape painting [...]

George Inness is still considered one of the best landscape painters America has produced. A lot that’s because he believed the role of the artist is to “go big or go home,” which in his [...]

“To make art is to take a Grand Tour of your soul, a journey to the emotions we feel when in the presence of our inner landscape.” – Klaus Ottmann How would you define “finding [...]

Wouldn’t it be nice to be told your ceremonial boat was waiting for you on the canal landing just outside your palace? That pleasure belonged to the doge, the ruler of the Venetian republic, on [...]