Perhaps the sketch of a work is so pleasing because everyone can finish it as he chooses. — Eugene Delacroix For nine years in a row, I attended a public school in New Jersey named Washington Elementary. Every classroom sported a framed print of Gilbert Stuart's famous unfinished...
For us, there is only the trying. The rest is not our business. — T.S. Eliot Businesspeople are always citing Voltaire's advice, "Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good." They know you'll never earn a profit, if you do. I wish more painters felt that way. Instead,...
Everything is broken. — Bob Dylan Philosopher Bernard Stiegler calls ours The Age of Disruption. Everything is broken. That insight is perhaps what lures me to the movement known as Disrupted Realism. Disrupted Realism, which embraces the idea that "the power of chaos rivals the power of order," has deep art-historic...
All you have to do is show up. — Constantine Brancusi My worst enemy is indolence. You could call it my favorite hobby. Writer Ernest Hemingway famously beat indolence by leaving his last sentence unfinished every night. Sculptor Constantine Brancusi beat it by arriving early at his studio in the mornings...
Happiness lies in the joy of achievement and the thrill of creative effort. — Franklin D. Roosevelt On Saturday, I had the distinct pleasure of painting en plein air outside the studio of N.C. Wyeth in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, under the guidance of my realism teacher, Randall Graham. The afternoon was warm,...
The soul grows by subtraction, not addition. — Thoreau The rare exception, I painted Beer Bottle alla prima from a photo yesterday. (I usually paint from observation.) I'm away from my studio, staying, Thoreau-like, in a cabin in Maine, and can't set up my subject easily. While still wet,...
Inspiration is for amateurs. — Chuck Close Old objects and the personal memories associated with them inspire most of my paintings. I'm content to call it nostalgia. Like weight-gain, nostalgia is an affliction of the aged and can rapidly get out of hand. I especially loathe the kind that...
All painting is accident. — Francis Bacon My small oil painting Nutella came about almost by itself and almost instantly—or at least it felt that way, coming on the heels as it did of a much larger painting entitled Yoo Hoo. Nutella took less than two hours to paint;...
I'm pleased to announce the release of my first e-book, Paint Licks. Paint Licks gathers insights by 30 painters, living and dead, into the whys and hows of painting. Download your free copy now. Share it with a friend. And let me know if you enjoy it....
With the aid of my trusty spatula, I am attempting to paint only in planes. I'm taking my lead from Cape Cod School founder Charles Hawthorne, whose wisdom is captured in Dover's diminutive Hawthorne on Painting. Hawthorne asked painters to "forget drawing" and "see color planes." By encouraging painters...