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...
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...
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...
Informally, I call many of my paintings depictions of "nostalgic food." Viewers who react to these paintings usually respond with cheer, and will immediately mention memories of childhood. Among other things, I've painted sandwiches, donuts, Twinkies, Peeps, and bottles of soda pop. Right now, I'm trying to capture...
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....
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...
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...
Unlike a painting, food is an impermanent, fleeting art form. ― Julie Piatt Ever since the cave painters of Lascaux, painters have depicted food. Picasso was no exception. But while depictions of food in still-lifes had traditionally celebrated abundance, Picasso's depictions—at least during World War II—were meant to remind...
Why is it awful for a painter today to create an impressionist painting? It's not because they're painting it badly; it's because they don't have a reason to paint it. — Matthew Ritchie I sometimes hear other artists—more skilled than I—say that they'd like to paint more...