Far more than offering us a rustic church nestled in a quiet grove of trees, Casper David Friedrich’s Abbey among the Oak Trees set the stage for 200 years of gothic horror. This artist had [...]

Master watercolor realist Ian McEwan has been awarded first place in the PleinAir Salon’s monthly competition for his painting, “Morning Calm.” McEwan is president of the watercolor division of the Royal Scottish Society of Painters. [...]

You’d be surprised how much you can improve your own painting by learning about art that’s “stood the test of time.” However, it’s important to remember that art history has not given all the great [...]

In the winter of 1883 Édouard Manet, then 51 and confined to bed, was dying a painful death. And yet, over the course of his final year of life, the artist had been distilling the [...]

Amsterdam’s Van Gogh Museum was taken off guard last week by a horde of people competing for collectibles only tangentially related to the artist himself. The crowd descended upon the opening of an exhibition of [...]

What interests me most is neither still life nor landscape: it is the human figure. – Henri Matisse The term “figure painting” (or “figurative painting”) typically refers to representational art related to the human form. [...]

"Success consists of going from failure to failure without loss of enthusiasm." - Winston Churchill Keep going.  Effort itself – even if unrewarded, seemingly unsuccessful and in vain – is better than giving up. You have to give up hope and [...]

I sit and look out upon all the sorrows of the world, and upon all oppression and shame, I hear secret convulsive sobs from young men at anguish with themselves, remorseful after deeds done, I [...]

Prior to the latter half of the nineteenth century, the “official” academic channels of professional painting considered still life to be at the bottom of the totem pole. It didn’t have the heroic content of [...]

“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.” -Robert Henri Define art however you like, but the act of making it is a gesture of hope.  [...]