“An artist must possess nature,” according to Matisse. Matisse’s word choice in the quote above suggests the word possession had special meaning for the artist. It comes from the Latin possess(us) which means “to occupy” [...]
Last week we ran our picks for the “Top Five” films about artists (not documentaries, but mainstream studio dramatizations, of the genre known in Hollywood as the biopic). We asked what other artist biopics you [...]
It’s good for any artist, beginner, experienced, realist or otherwise, to have a sense of the inspiring stories of men and women who believed in themselves enough to place painting at the center of their [...]
On gray mornings, when a mist erases the definitions of things, the merely odd can seem monumental and the familiar strange. Van Gogh’s ox cart lumbers out of this indeterminate between-space of mist and fog [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
“With almost any creative endeavor, we mistakenly think that we know what translates into success.” – Susan J. Langer Most people look at paintings in galleries and museums and think that artists are special people, [...]
Nineteenth-century painter Martin Johnson Heade (1819-1904) created some of the most beautiful marsh paintings the world has ever seen in a series of strongly horizontal compositions that were quite unusual for the time. Although his [...]
Inspiration is One Breath Away
... And the Salty Inside Joke Some Say it Hides
