Nine days out of ten all he saw around him was the wretchedness of his unsuccessful attempts. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty Professor Matt Saunders offers Harvard undergrads an unusual studio course he titles "Painting's Doubt." "Painting is an engagement between the self and the world," his course description reads....
The artist has no more actual place in the American culture of today than he has in the American economy of today. — William Faulkner I'm flattered so many friends and acquaintances have taken well to my choice of an "encore" career. At the same time, I'm saddened...
Hurry up and make mistakes! — Lennart Anderson Bob Ross famously said of painters, "We don't make mistakes, just happy little accidents." I might dampen that to say, "We don't learn, unless we make mistakes." With learning to paint come countless mundane mistakes. Rookie mistakes. Stupid mistakes. Messy mistakes. They're aggravating. But then, upon...
How does an artist explain her artwork when she’s not there to explain it? That’s where an artist statement comes in. An artist statement explains the work to buyers, collectors, gallerists, fair organizers, and jurists when the artist isn’t present. It’s also the key to building the confidence...
Art is dangerous. — Picasso A non-fungible token (NFT) is a digital deed. With it, you can prove you own the "original" of a digital asset (as opposed to a copy). An NFT is not the original—that's something else; a GIF, for example. But by owning the NFT, you hold the key to...
At the core of all well-founded belief lies belief that is unfounded. ― Ludwig Wittgenstein Alberto Giacometti's painstakingly tentative figurative paintings, influenced by the theories of French phenomenologists, captivate me. They always have. Like perception itself, they're precarious (the phenomenologists held that "it is the essence of certainty to...
Every painting, no matter how successful, leaves the artist with another chance to paint what she had in mind. — Robert Brault "Blessed is he who expects nothing," goes Alexander Pope's Ninth Beatitude, "for he shall never be disappointed." Painters who've worked in industry seem to know when to...
Hold onto your taste, even when you're embarrassed by it. — Jerry Saltz Connoisseurs and critics often look down on art that's driven by pop culture (the source of the "pop" in the term "pop art"). Not me. I guess I'm a child of the '60s, because I love pop...
When art critics get together, they talk about content, style, trend and meaning, but when painters get together, they talk about where you can get the best turpentine. — Picasso Painter Liz Floyd told me during a recent interview that she uses empty cat food tins as...
Reality has to be digested, it has to be transmuted by paint. — Richard Diebenkorn Wayne Thiebaud 100, the not-to-be-missed show now at the Brandywine River Museum, has awakened me to the primacy of cast shadows. Radiant and rainbowlike, Thiebaud's cast shadows are nothing short of delicious. After consuming...