Painting

“The thing made is a work of art made by art, but not itself art. The art remains in the artist and is the knowledge by which things are made.” – Ananda Kentish Coomaraswamy It’s an intriguing thought to view art as not the work itself but the means by which the work is created.…

“Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there.” – Miles Davis It’s all too easy to play what’s there – to take another photograph, paint a painting, write a story, compose a song, much like the ones you’ve done before. There are lots of reasons to do so – creating a consistent body of work,…

“We are not interested in the unusual, but in the usual seen unusually.” –  Beaumont Newhall I have noticed a difference over time between many paintings and photography. Many successful paintings have been created of subjects that are pretty boring. They are scenes that a good photographer would never even bother with. The composition can…

“It is dangerous to let the public behind the scenes. They are easily disillusioned and they are angry with you, for it was the illusion they loved.” – W. Somerset Maugham I couldn’t resist this quote when I saw it as it is a perfect continuation of the discussion in my last post that started…

“Thinking is more interesting than knowing, but less interesting than looking.” – Goethe An interesting hierarchy. I agree with the first part – knowing means there are fewer possibilities, and possibility is what keeps our interest. Some people may believe knowing is supreme, but as an artist, I think it leads to stagnation. The second…

“It takes a lot of imagination to be a good photographer. You need less imagination to be a painter because you can invent things. But in photography everything is so ordinary; it takes a lot of looking before you learn to see the extraordinary. – David Bailey This is an uncommon viewpoint and, i think,…

“You can’t look at abstract art without thinking.” – Patricia Cole-Ferullo Yeah, much of the time you are thinking “What the heck?”… But seriously, I think this is an interesting and perhaps controversial statement. When looking at something abstract, we start trying to find something familiar or recognizable. We start trying to figure it out,…

“You have to choose where you look, and in making that choice you eliminate entire worlds.” – Barbara Bloom Artists crop reality. That’s what makes us artists. We choose what to include and what not to include – this is the biggest and most important decision to be made about each piece. We seek a…

I am an artist who, for forty years Has stood at the lake edge Throwing stones in the lake, Sometimes, very faintly, I hear a splash. – Maxwell Bates We produce so many pieces of art over so many years and, occasionally, we hear the splash. Most importantly, we hear the splash “very faintly”. After…

“Don’t wait for inspiration. It comes while one is working.” – Henri Matisse For the past two or three weeks I’ve been frustrated with my monoprint making. Lots of interesting starts that went nowhere. Either I couldn’t figure out how to finish them, or I tried and ruined them. I felt like I was regressing…