Hollywood loves artists because they're observant, flawed, eccentric and vulnerable—qualities a main character must have to win over the audience. Artists also allow directors to smuggle scores of "beauty shots" into their films. Always a plus. Here's my list of the dozen top films depicting artists (in chronological order)....
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...
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...
Twenty years ago, I attended a lecture by the renowned architect Frank Gehry. Meek and plain-speaking—like most Canadians—Gehry described his signature design process: "First, you get the building right. Then, you make it weird." Gehry meant a building must be structurally sound and functional first; a Gehry...
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...
In Next Avenue, I spotlight the work and careers of four "second-act" artists, proving seasoned folks can flourish if they follow their passion. Grab a cup of coffee, sit back, and enjoy! ...
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...
I'm often asked what the term in my artist statement alla prima means. It's Italian for "at once." I painted "Jug and Friends," for example, all at once, in a two-hour time-span. I painted it directly, seamlessly, or, as the Germans say, aus einem Guss—literally, "from a single...
It’s not so easy writing about nothing. — Patti Smith A few years ago I met Noah Scalin, who launched his career as a professional artist by creating a skull every day for a year. "Creativity is a practice," Scalin said. His advice was simple: Pick something—anything—and make one every...
Deer-hunting season has begun in my neighborhood. You can tell by the intermittent pop-pop pop-pop of rifle-fire emerging from the woods nearby in the autumn afternoons. Hunting season is all year round for painters. We stalk not game, but pretty things to paint. The whole world is our...