Writer Matt Cardin calls it “creativity’s hidden paradox,” and it goes like this: “What is most private and personal in you is also what is most universal.” He means that what is deep in you [...]

When Claude Monet was in his 60s, his eyesight began to fail, the result of cataracts developing in both of his eyes. It got so bad he had to label his paint tubes - he [...]

Finding Your Way by Dina Brodsky “I wake to sleep, and take my waking slow … I learn by going where I have to go.” ~Theodore Roethke, The Waking Dina Brodsky, “I Wake to Sleep,” [...]

John Singer Sargent had a secret weapon. He had an extraordinary determination to mix a brushstroke’s worth of exactly the right color and (more importantly still) the precise value he wanted – whipping each piece [...]

In an article published not too long ago in The Atlantic, Arthur C. Brooks argued that art is as important to human helath as exercise and good nutrition. Art needn’t be primarily an escapist activity [...]

In the year 1855, the same that saw the first publication of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, American landscape painter Asher B. Durand published a series of nine letters on landscape painting in his son’s [...]

If portraits seduce, confront, and fascinate us, it’s not least because they put art directly in the service of the human psyche, with all the mysteries that entails. Out of the several genres of realism [...]

“Steal like an artist.”  That’s the title of a popular self-empowerment book for artists and a phrase on lots of peoples’ lips these days. It’s a variation on “Good artists borrow, great artists steal!” which [...]

If you want to loosen up your paintings, here’ a little piece of advice: "Swing a bigger brush - you don't know what fun you are missing." So wrote Charles Hawthorne in a little gem [...]

Since we’re talking about him this week, I thought we’d give Matisse the floor and see what he has to say for himself.  White Algae on Orange and Red Background (Algue blanche sur fond [...]