William Lathrop and Daniel Garber, two classic Pennsylvania Impressionists, captured the spirit of spring in two different paintings in 1916. There’s something equally inspiring in each of them, but the differences between them can teach [...]
1. LISTEN TO THE PAINT Maintain a dialogue with your painting. Many artists begin with a precise underpainting and proceed carefully and accurately apace, and many do not. Some painters have a definite endpoint in [...]
Last week we took a close look at a few landscapes by John Singer Sargent, but we didn’t get THIS close! In fact, most ordinary mortals will never get this close to a painting by [...]
Today we’re turning aside from painting to visit a popular form of sculpture called assemblage. An assemblage is a sort of 3-D collage, wherein an artist puts together (assembles) various elements to create a new [...]
Especially strong in design, Paul Kratter's paintings skillfully compose light, atmosphere, and expression of emotion. Paul comes from an illustration background that instilled strong drawing and design skills and a robust belief in graphic shapes [...]
Art opens portals to timeless and exotic inner worlds. Whether looking or creating, the hours pass unnoticed – silent (but no less real) adventures befall us. Even if the effort exhausts us, we walk away [...]
Eugène Carrière’s painting “The Sleep” (above) represents a woman and her infant sleeping side by side. Yet despite the close-up view, the blurry and sweeping mode of representation eludes the onlooker. The outlines of both [...]
“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 [...]
