Entertainment and creativity magazine The Table Read features my gift-giving advice for the season. Don't miss it. Above: Santa's Whiskers by N.C. Wyeth. Published on the cover of the December 17, 1921 edition of Judge with the caption "Hey, kiddies, here we go again."...

  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,...

New mysteries. New day. Fresh doughnuts. — David Lynch Is it any wonder we love doughnuts? Without beginning or end, they symbolize eternity, while we mortals know only finitude. Not to mention they're tasty. We can thank the Dutch not only for the still life, but the doughnut, too. They...

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...

In February, the Newark Arts Alliance will host Cold Comforts, my very first solo show. The paintings in the show will center on the theme of "food as consolation."* I'm delighted the Alliance elected to host Cold Comforts and glad for the boost it will give to...

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...

  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;...