In Jan Vermeer’s great painting, The Geographer, of 1662, we have a paradox: a wanderer’s spirit suspended in the confines of an interior. Vermeer is forever painting light coming through windows, but in this painting, [...]

Art historians call George Hendrik Breitner (1857-1923) one of the leading "Amsterdam Impressionists." However, his paintings don't align with the kind of artwork we commonly associate with Impressionism.  That’s because Breitner and his peers ignored [...]

“Poetry is a man and a woman and the distance between them.” – Lawrence Ferlinghetti Edward Hopper’s figures have no one talk to. They’re entirely self-absorbed, isolated from each other even when together, and most [...]

There’s an odd distinction some people make between being “someone who paints” and being an artist. Beginners, especially, aren’t sure what to call themselves; they’re far more likely to say they’re “learning painting” than to [...]

It’s natural to assume that the subject of your painting (what it’s a painting of) is what affects your audience and gets feeling across. For example, you might expect a vase full of flowers to [...]

“Light is therefore color.” - JMW Turner Surely one of the reasons we go to painting is for the light.  But not just any light! Numerous artists throughout history have used light as a visual [...]

The human portrait remains one of the most challenging and rewarding of artistic pursuits. Getting an accurate image down is hard enough, but then there's getting the LIFE into it. To those not privy to [...]

Painting is about feeling, evocation, and “stories,” insights into life on this planet, transporting viewers into realms of mind and emotion. Feeling or “mood” comes not from what you paint but how you paint it. [...]

Painting from life, whether it’s a portrait, the figure, or a plein air landscape, offers certain advantages over working from photos. However, using photo references makes it a lot easier to “make things look right.” [...]

If you spend much time in any museum’s European painting section, you’ll encounter exquisitely rendered images of gods and goddesses, mighty heroes and hapless mortals and fantastical creatures both beautiful and grotesque. One such mythological [...]