Painting's not important. The important thing is keeping busy. — Grandma Moses The summer has been good to me, because at long last I've made a daily practice of painting. It was a goal I set for myself two years ago, then discarded like an unwanted penny. It took...
Two environmental activists superglued their hands to Botticelli's Primavera in the Uffizi Gallery last week, AP reports. A museum security guard wasted no time in reacting. In a "refreshing, no-nonsense approach to eco-warriors," according to The Daily Mail, the guard tore the protesters' hands from the painting...
Art offers breathing room for the spirit. ― John Updike A new study published in the Journal of Positive Psychology shows that visiting art museums can ease chronic paid, reduce anxiety and depression, and forestall dementia. Researchers from the University of Pennsylvania compiled and reviewed over 100 science...
A new study from UBS shows that nearly half (47%) of all American art museums focus on the top 4% of contemporary artists. Commercial art galleries are less biased, with only 23% focused on the top 4%. Nonetheless, that means 96% of artists—the "emerging" ones—have little chance...
The British art critic David Sylvester asked AbEx painter Willem de Kooning in 1960 whether painted forms should be recognizable. De Kooning replied that painted forms "ought to have an emotion of a concrete experience." Today we'd more likely say that painted forms should convey how they...
Meet me Saturday in downtown Lewes at the Delaware By Hand Outdoor Artisan Market. I have lots of fresh, new paintings and will be offering special show-only prices. Sponsored by the Biggs Museum of American Art, Delaware by Hand will feature artists from around the state. You'll...
The sentimental person thinks things will last; the romantic person has a desperate confidence they won't. — F. Scott Fitzgerald "High culture is paranoid about sentiment," the late painter Thomas Kinkade once said. The undisputed "king of kitsch," he often compared his art to Walt Disney's. "My paintings beckon you...
What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun. — Ecclesiastes A fellow artist expressed to me yesterday her disappointment that realist painters—even of the caliber of Monet and Van Gogh—never add anything original to our...
The pump don't work 'cause the vandals took the handle. — Bob Dylan Just in time for the 60th anniversary of Bob Dylan's "Subterranean Homesick Blues"—which enshrined a vandalized pump within America's literary canon—an unknown artist in Denmark has vandalized a painting by one of nation's most...
We live in a political world. — Bob Dylan The notion behind this post came to me a week ago, but I felt no urgency to pursue the idea until late last evening, when POLITICO announced that the Supreme Court has voted to strike down Roe v. Wade. My...