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...

A social media post by another artist this week prompted me to ponder the origin of the term still life. The Met defines a still life as a glorification of everyday life—of "the home and personal possessions, commerce, trade, and learning." The still life emerged as a genre...

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,...

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...

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...

Attention is the beginning of devotion. — Mary Oliver Oil paint was made for depicting flesh. — Willem DeKooning Compared to, say, watching a fireworks display, painting is a decidedly jumbled way of perceiving. Watching fireworks is just that—watching. Eyeballing a show, a spectacle, a rebus (from the Latin non...

Humanity is not produced by the way our eyes are implanted in us. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty Writing in The New Yorker this week, art critic Peter Schjeldahl says of Cezanne, "He revolutionized visual art, changing a practice of rendering illusions to one of aggregating marks that cohere...

A painter should not paint what he sees, but what will be seen. — Paul Valéry Every painter—even realists—spends years training to "abstract" scenes; to cease to see only objects and begin to see only lines, shapes, contours, and shadows. Ceasing to see only objects is not an...