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 [...]

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. [...]

As someone who’s been asked to judge some dozen or so art show competitions, I offer here an insider’s take on the judging process. Art contests are weird, mysterious beasts. You can never be sure [...]

BY LAURIE BASHAM For so many years I had “Imposter Syndrome.” I doubted myself and my abilities and always felt like I was faking it. I felt like this when I was teaching middle school [...]

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 [...]

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 [...]

Beloved of artists and art-lovers alike, Henri Matisse painted from a place of exuberance and honesty – he took a joyful approach to the world as well as to painting. Matisse’s canvases show plainly he [...]

How to Draw with Charcoal: A Medium With Mystical Gravity By Julio Reyes (www.julioreyes.com) There’s an almost mystical gravity to this old material. There’s no denying its seriousness once you’ve placed your first mark to paper. [...]

The Plein Air Community Mourns the Passing of a Spirited, Joy-Filled Artist

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