31 Mar The Real Thing
British artist Damien Hirst is hawking 10,000 nonfungible tokens (NFTs), each redeemable for one of his cherry blossom prints, according to The New York Times. “NFTs are the most exciting new thing in the creative industry,” Hirst told the paper. “The fact that they polarize people so...
03 Jan New Year, New Habits
Others have no data for computing our orbit other than our past acts. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Twenty years ago, a business coach recommended I read the now out-of-print Nichecraft. The book convinced me to specialize—a lesson I've carried with me into my move into professional painting. Specializing...
14 Dec Painting Like a Millionaire
I'm rereading Somerset Maugham's The Moon and Sixpence and am struck by the scene in which the narrator begs Charles Strickland to explain himself. Why has the stockbroker abandoned his wife and children for la vie de bohème? "Do you mean to say you didn't leave your...
12 Dec Patronize Me. Please.
Though a living cannot be made from art, art makes life worth living. — John Sloan John Sloan was starving when he said what he said, so you have to forgive him. It is possible to make a living from art—and a decent one, at that. I...
28 Nov Mistakes
Most artists trust their intuition. Sometimes it leads you to make mistakes, but that hardly matters. There is no such thing as failure, you just learn from it and go on. — David Hockney One advantage of oil painting resides in the medium's "forgiving" nature. You can wipe...
22 Nov Average Everydayness
My artist statement takes over 300 words to describe what I hope to capture in my oil paintings. What I wish to capture, in as few words as possible, is average everydayness. The term—a favorite of mine—comes from philosopher Martin Heidegger's colossal book Being and Time. Average everydayness...
15 Nov Meet Me at the Fair
I invite you to grab your sweetheart, don your mask and come see my exhibit of original oil paintings for sale at the Center for the Creative Arts' Annual Artisan Show, next Saturday, November 21, and Sunday, November 22. At the event—a weekend marketplace for fine...
13 Nov Listening
Art speaks to everyone, but some people don't listen. ― C. Vallo I'm a fortunate son. As a kid, living only eight miles outside Manhattan, I had the chance early in life to experience art in a global art center—indeed, the global art center in the day. My parents many...
09 Nov Getting On
Selling your paintings is a lot like busking, a word that derives from the Italian buscare, meaning to "get." Painters, like buskers, sell their art not in hopes of getting rich, but in hopes of getting on, as in "I'll leave you to get on with...
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