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...
"Immersive exhibitions are a recent scourge," says artist and writer Sarah Rose Sharp in Hyperallergic. But one new show passes her sniff test. Now at the Prado, the show makes use of The Sense of Smell, a 17th-century painting by Jan Brueghel the Elder and Peter Paul...
The question is not what you look at, but what you see. — Henry David Thoreau This week I had to print my Artist Statement for an exhibition and wondered whether it was up to date. I'd put a lot of work into it last year (as did...
Whatever the objects of his attention, the painter will not make them say what they are without thereby learning what he is. — Jean-Paul Sartre Just when I think I've about had it with party strife, microbes, blizzards, intolerance and inequality, painting comes along to pick me up. Still-life...
Whoever is in a hurry shows that the thing he is about is too big for him. — Lord Chesterfield Originally, "slow food" founder Carlo Petrini didn't mean to start a global movement 3o years ago. He merely wanted Europeans to preserve local cuisines. But Petrini's "Slow Food...
The job of an artist is to offer a sanctuary of beauty to an ugly world – Jeff Goins A few years ago, University of Chicago historian Tom Smith asked 27,000 Americans to evaluate their jobs. He found that, of nearly 200 occupations, painters scored fifth for...
Years ago, I discovered—quite by accident—that the ideal wedding gift for a couple you don't know well is a painting. Decades after the ceremony, when the couple has lost, broken, donated, discarded, re-gifted and forgotten all their other wedding presents, they'll inevitably still have yours, hanging...
All things have been given to us for a purpose, and an artist must feel this more intensely. ― Jorge Luis Borges Covid-19 is killing people who haven't caught it. I just read the lament of a colleague whose out-of-work client committed suicide last week. That man won't...
Art doesn’t have to be expensive. — Judith Selkowitz, Art Adviser Al, a painter I know, asked me yesterday about the size of my works. He's friend to another artist who is enjoying commercial success with large abstract paintings, which he sells to interior decorators. Al wondered...