Claude Monet loved to paint the sea, and a quick study of some his best as well as some lesser-known paintings of the ocean can teach practicing artists sound fundamental skills when diving into a [...]

In a letter to Douglas Cooper in January 1955, Russian-French painter Nicolas de Staël wrote:  “True painting, always attempts to include all aspects, the impossible addition of the present, past and future.”  There’s a lot [...]

By Barb Walker Barbwalkerpaintings.com I grew up in the ‘60s. Now much later in my life I often take a journey back to those sweetest of voices and some of the best music that was [...]

By Jill Stefani Wagner https://www.jillwagnerart.com  I have a confession to make. For a good part of my life, I was often terrified of new challenges and the possibility of failure. Whether in my advertising career [...]

Don’t apologize for your work. Because actually, failure is good for you – and you know it!  Obviously critiques of your work are, by nature, uncomfortable. You look at everybody else’s paintings, you feel that [...]

The brilliant Romanian sculptor Constantin Brancusi worked over 20 years on a series celebrating the theme of a bird in flight. As we recently noted in a previous piece on wildness in art, he never sculpted [...]

This painting, with its extraordinary history, played a pivotal role in the 21st century renewal of interest in classical realism. If you’ve ever visited the website of the Art Renewal Center (ARC) , a non-profit [...]

"I can't even draw a straight line." If I’ve heard that once, I’ve heard it 1,000 times. The proper answer, of course, is “You don’t have to!” For that matter, plenty of people who become [...]

By Jeremy Caniglia jeremycaniglia.com Mimesis — the copying of a masterwork — has been a key part of painters’ training since classical antiquity. As musicians must learn basic instrumental techniques before developing their own styles, [...]

Once you master some of the technical basics of plein air painting, you might start to wonder,  how you give your work more life? One place to start is with feeling – and getting it [...]