“Form is never more than a revelation of content.” -Denise Levertov The American poet Denise Levertov used the term “organic form” to describe how all the parts of a work of art relate to the [...]

What Makes This Painting Great? 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. [...]

The painting above is by John Singer Sargent. It’s titled simply “Moraine” or “The Moraine,” which is so blunt and literal that we can assume the artist was more interested in the lights, shadows, and [...]

The Salon Springs Eternal! Every month the judges of the PleinAir Magazine Salon art competition select 100 of the best entries, from which the celebrity judge chooses the top winners overall as well as the [...]

Kathryn Stats has developed a keen eye for the landscape and nature. She wandered the Utah countryside on her horse until her early twenties and later studied with artists in the Salt Lake City area [...]

“Spring is nature’s way of saying, ‘Let’s party!’” - Robin Williams In Western art, the depiction of the Biblical account of Jesus’ Resurrection is an archetype filled with meaning and a sense of hope and [...]

The sooner a painting is “good” the better, right? “A painting lives or dies in the first 15 minutes,” an artist I know is fond of saying. That’s not necessarily how it is for everyone [...]

The latest round of winning paintings from the monthly PleinAir Salon have been announced by judge Darrell Beauchamp, executive director of the Museum of Western Art in Kerrville, TX. Beauchamp awarded place overall to Bill Farnsworth [...]

Modern artist Henri Matisse didn’t paint en plein air – not in the way we think of it anyway. He did, however, write, “An artist must possess nature.” And this short and sweet sentence holds [...]

According to Brueghel when Icarus fell it was spring  a farmer was ploughing his field the whole pageantry  of the year was awake tingling with itself  sweating in the sun that melted the wings' wax  [...]