21 Oct The Sketch Hunter

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 woods.

In The Art Spirit, Robert Henri describes the “sketch hunter:”

“He moves through life life as he finds it, not passing negligently the things he loves, but stopping to know them, and to note them down in the shorthand of his sketchbook.”

The sketch hunter prowls the world for joyous sights, Henri writes.

“He is looking for what he loves. It’s found anywhere, everywhere.

“Those who are not hunters do not see these things. The hunter is learning to see and to understand—to enjoy.”

NOTE: Stalk the new works on my website.