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Author: Carol L. Douglas

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Letters from home

Opening Saturday, May 31, 4-7 PM
Carol L. Douglas Studio/Richards Hill Gallery,
394 Commercial Street, Rockport, ME, 04856
May 30-June 26, 2025
Tuesday-Sunday, Noon-5 PM

Lobster pound, 14X18, oil on canvas, $1594 framed includes shipping and handling within the continental US. This is true nostalgia, since this lobster pound is no longer with us.

Certain places evoke collective nostalgia because they serve as shared universal touchstones. These are places where personal and collective memories intersect. Maine is one of them, which is why I’m calling my first show this season Letters from Home.

Letters from Home opens on Saturday, May 31 from 4-7 PM, at 394 Commercial Street, Rockport, ME. If you don’t stop by for a glass of wine and hors d’oeuvres, I’ll be terribly disappointed. For one thing, I hate leftovers.

Country Path, 14X18, oil on archival canvasboard, $1,275 includes shipping and handling in continental US. This isn’t in Maine, but it’s in the show because country roads and paths are places which inspire that feeling of nostalgia in us.

Collective nostalgia and the meaning of place

Maine is in New England, but it’s too north-woods to be in the top drawer of the social tea chest. (That’s true of much of northern New England, although the Yankee village-square and sugar maple aesthetic is universal.)

Still, Maine is a cultural touchstone of many virtues which we associate with New England. These include community, rugged individualism, self-sufficiency, respect for nature and hard work. I know we now like to adopt a cynical attitude about those things, but I submit that’s a pose. Even when we can’t succeed at them, we still, deep down, admire those traits. Our feelings about them are embedded in our collective nostalgia for Maine.

To most of America, Maine exists out of time. We’re all nostalgic for an America that once was, and the remnant of that exists here in Maine more than many other places. While most of my readers have never even visited my little town (but you should), we all have memories of a time when America had smaller communities, mom-and-pop motels, restaurants that weren’t chains and quieter roads. These memories may not even be from our own generation, but universal images that go back generations.

Larky Morning at Rockport Harbor, 11X14, on linen, $869 unframed includes shipping in continental US.

Places also carry an imprint of history. None of us are old enough to have hauled up cod onto the icy decks of schooners that plied the Grand Banks. However, we understand their importance, and are happy to see them, restored and resting in our harbors.

Not all these paintings are from Maine, because I don’t always paint here. But they’re all of things I think of as universal archetypes from the past. That’s our collective home.

Artists like me are, of course, terrible offenders at promoting collective nostalgia. We don’t do that cynically, or manipulatively. Like everyone else, we feel the pain of loss and change, so we paint what’s disappearing.

Please join me on May 31, from 4-7 PM for the opening of Letters from Home, at my gallery at 394 Commercial Street, Rockport, ME.

Evening in the Garden, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: how to prepare for your first art show

Île d’Orléans waterfront farm, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

A student in one of my classes has been painting lovely small studies of birds. For the past two weeks, I’ve been musing on how she might display and sell them in her Brooklyn, NY, neighborhood. It turns out I’m not the only person who thinks she’s ready; she was just asked to mount her first show. We’ve had a lot of back-and-forth as she’s gotten things ready.

My first art show was in high school, when I could happily leave the prep to the grown-ups. For many years, I overprepared, with too much inventory and refreshments. I hope I’ve learned to be more balanced, but my Italian grandmother will peek out now and again.

How to prepare for your first art show

In honor of my student Amy, I’ve put together a list of questions I think are important. If you’re trying to figure out how to prepare for your first art show, I hope this helps.

Athabasca River Confluence, 9X12, $696 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Where should a beginning artist aim to show their work?

Approach coffee shops, professional offices and libraries to see if they would be interested in showing your work. Please don’t think of these places as down-market. I have had long, successful relationships with them, and they’ve resulted in better sales than some galleries.

How should you approach them? While galleries generally want you to apply online in 2025, that is too much to ask of a local business. The best way to approach them is in person. Follow that up by emailing them images of your work. Some kind of web presence is necessary, even if it’s a one-page free website. And you need a business card.

Assuming you’re not a hermit, you know people—at the Y, in your church, at the coffee shop you visit every day, at your local am-dram, your hometown library, at the dentist. Don’t hesitate to ask your connections.

Pensive 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How many pieces do you need for an art show?

First off, don’t even go looking unless you have a solid body of work. I don’t mean work that you necessarily want to show, but a body of work with some depth that can be mined for content.

How much you need for a specific, thematically-related show depends on how large the space is and whether the work is to be hung salon-style or in a more open, contemporary way. When you visit the space, bring a tape measure and take photos. If they already have work up, count the pieces and compare the sizes to yours.

How should you choose a theme or title for your show?

That should derive naturally from your work, but if it isn’t, perhaps you could enlist a friend to help you narrow down the major themes of your work. “Historical landscapes” is a boring theme, but “Memories of Bad Old Butchertown” might be just roguish enough to draw people in.

Maynard Dixon Clouds, 11X14, oil on archival canvas board, $869 includes shipping in continental US.

Should the work be framed?

In a perfect world, yes. Paintings generally look and sell better in frames. However, give people the option to buy them without frames at a slight discount.

I realize frames are expensive and annoying, but they really do sell paintings.

Should the work be signed?

Yes.

How do you label the work?

Label each painting with the title, dimensions, medium, price, and your name. These labels should be typed. I have created a blank you can download. If you know how to use Microsoft Office, you can merge these from a list; if not, you can just type in the information. Print them on card stock, trim them to be 2×3.5”, and Bob’s your uncle.

Who should you invite?

Absolutely everyone you know. You’ll be amazed at who’s interested.

Twenty minutes you won’t regret wasting

This is a fabulous short video by the National Gallery on 14th century Siena and the invention of painting.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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What is the purpose of art?

Old Wyoming Homestead, 9×12, oil on archival canvasboard, $696 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US. In their spare time, Jane and her husband restored this place.

Yesterday I had a long drive and conversation with artist Jane Chapin about what we’re doing and why. You’d think at our ages we’d long ago figured out the purpose of art. However, that is a constantly-shifting question.

For a long time, painting is a question of mastery. Later, it becomes a question of meaning. For artist and collector alike, the purpose of art can be elusive.

Main Street, Owl’s Head, oil on archival canvasboard, $1623 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What is art, anyway?

I like to say that fine art is anything that’s made without any practical purpose whatsoever; a game with one active and many passive players. Art is, after all, just one expression of human creativity, imagination and skill.

Does that mean art doesn’t necessarily have a purpose?

Art doesn’t always have a practical purpose, but it almost always has a function. That might be emotional, intellectual, aesthetic or cultural. Its function may even be to defy or question the idea of purpose.

It’s more likely that art does have a broadly-defined purpose. That could be the expression of ideas, experiences, or even propaganda. Art plays a large part in our shared shaped identities, which is why we can so frequently identify the socioeconomic and ethnic background of people just by looking at pictures on their walls. And art influences people’s emotional states.

Lobster pound, 14X18, oil on canvas, $1594 framed includes shipping and handling within the continental US.

What is my art supposed to do, anyway?

This is the question I found myself batting around with Jane. It’s no longer enough to paint beautiful landscapes; I’ve got another itch in there to be satisfied.

Of course, art is not supposed to do anything in particular—its function varies across time, cultures, and personalities. But periodically I need to ask:

  • Am I trying to express inner feelings, thoughts or memories?
  • Am I trying to communicate ideas? If so, can I put them into words?
  • Or, am I trying to deliver messages that might be hard to express with words alone?
  • Am I trying to evoke an aesthetic or sensory response?
  • Am I trying to go where nobody has gone before? If so, how?
  • Am I trying to be disruptive or subversive?

Of course, artists can be trying to do more than one of those things at the same time. Right now, I’m debating how I rank those goals in importance to me. How would you rank their importance to you?

Owl’s Head, 11X14, oil on archival canvasboard, $1087 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Why do people hang art on their walls?

Years ago, I painted a series on misogyny. I learned an important lesson: most people don’t want huge pictures of abused women on their walls. While there’s a place for intellectual paintings, some subjects are not going to attract buyers.

In my experience, the main reasons people buy paintings is that the work resonates with them aesthetically and they have an emotional connection with it. (That’s why landscape is so important to us.) Following that, art is a way to express one’s identity, tastes and values. It can be a cultural and social signifier (for those who think that way). Yes, art can be a décor item. For some of us, it’s aspirational; we hope to paint like that person someday.

I have a lot of original art in my house and most of it is, frankly, sentimental—paintings by people I know and admire, or places I love, or of my kids. None, I’m happy to say, is there to cover up marks in my walls.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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What’s wrong with the internet?

Back It Up, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

“Consulting a website on my phone recently, I was struck by how painful it has become to use the internet. All I wanted was to read some local news and check the spread of a power cut in my area. Instead, as I scrolled, I was assailed by interruptions from integrated adverts which – in the best case – wanted eagerly to tell me about the charm and usefulness of a new BMW. In the worst case, I was urged to consult some lawyers immediately because I had been mis-sold an insurance or financial product in the past and was due an enormous payout, if only I would contact the least credible-looking advocates in the country…” (James Snell, How the Internet Turned Ugly)

I was an early and enthusiastic convert to the internet, and this blog is ancient by modern communications standards. But my distrust mounts more and more. We build this website using WordPress, which is a pretty sophisticated publishing system. We should be able to control what you see when you look at this blog. But that’s becoming more and more difficult, and we’re debating killing advertising forever. (It offsets our hosting costs, nothing more.)

Tin Foil Hat, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

If you’re a regular commenter, you may have noticed your comments swallowed up in the ether recently. My host and software are good about repelling cyberattacks, which happen periodically. Recently, however, we’ve been getting flooded with bot-comments linking to spurious websites. While they couldn’t be published until I okayed them, they were burying real comments in a sea of goop. Protecting against this kind of stuff takes time and energy away from painting.

Then there are the bogus ‘offers’ to buy my work as either NFTs or with fake cashier’s checks. I used to get two or three a year. Now I get a dozen a day. I delete them, of course, but they clog up my communications channels.

The worst offender, platform-wise, is Facebook. We used to have intelligent conversations about art and culture there. Now any real discourse is buried in promoted posts and advertising.

Stuffed animal in a bowl, with Saran Wrap. 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

What’s wrong with the internet?

Much of the internet is now driven by ads, clickbait, and monetization schemes. All bloggers understand search-engine optimization (SEO) driven content; it’s how search engines work. But SEO also floods search engines with low-quality, repetitive results. And social media platforms prioritize engagement over accuracy and depth. That’s why all our writing tools have reading-level gauges; heaven forbid we use language that forces the reader to think.

You might imagine you’re surfing the web for stuff that interests you, but content discovery is at the mercy of computer algorithms. You see what those platforms want you to see, not what’s most valuable or relevant.

Niche blogs like this one are a dying breed. We just don’t pack enough punch to compete with centralized platforms. I have a big readership for a painting blog, but it’s a mere flyspeck compared to modern influencers. The answer for many creatives has been to go to Substack, which is a subscription-based newsletter model. That would be a departure from my original model, which, sadly, might be obsolete.

Baby Monkey Riding on a Pig, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

Do you see this blog on a social media platform?

If so, you might want to take a moment to subscribe, at top left. I’ve spent twenty years not thinking overmuch about email as a means of dissemination, but in the current state of social media platforms, I don’t trust them to deliver fair, free content. Neither should you.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: preparing for a plein air painting workshop

High Surf, 12X16, oil on prepared birch painting surface, $1159 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Plein air painting workshops? I’ve taught a few (gazillion). Like most good instructors, I’ll send you supply lists, clothing suggestions, and travel instructions before we set out. But there are intangibles that will help you have a better time.

Plan to be flexible. In March when I drove over the mountain to Sedona, AZ, the last thing I expected to see were inches of snow on the ground. But weird stuff happens. Weather, light and circumstances change. Adaptability is a great skill, and rapid change is what makes landscape painting both the most difficult and the most rewarding of all the painterly disciplines.

You can never plan for every eventuality—for example, my rental car from Phoenix had neither snow tires nor a snow brush. But if you set out with a broad range of stuff you’re likely to need, more or less you’ll have enough stuff to make a stab at almost everything. And your teacher or peers will have whatever you need to fill in the rest.

Sunset over Cadillac Mountain, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 includes shipping and handling.

Last year at Sea & Sky at Schoodic we knew we had a Nor’easter bearing down on us on the last day. We coped by preloading extra painting time earlier in the week. Everyone got lots of painting and learning in. We had the added bonus of watching a wicked storm crossing Schoodic Point, although there was no paint sticking to paper or canvas in that weather. Then there was the time Cassie Sano saw a bear.

Embrace imperfection: If you’ve ever wanted to learn to paint loose, plein air is your best teacher. You simply can’t fuss over the details in the field, especially in half-day exercises.

I tell my students they’re not in class to make masterpieces but to learn. Ironically, that’s when they often do their best work.

Ask questions: This is a hard one for me, because I’m not one for group sharing, myself. But instructors are there to help, and your peers often have valuable insights. Ask your teacher lots of questions. I’m usually grateful for them, because they reveal places where my explanations have been fuzzy or weak.

Surf’s Up is 12X16, on a prepared birch surface. $1159 includes shipping and handling in the Continental US.

Why should you take a plein air workshop?

Painting outdoors forces artists to observe light, color and form more carefully and accurately than working from photos. It’s far harder, and it teaches you to edit on the fly, so when you do work in the studio you aren’t slavishly copying your reference pictures.

Plein air challenges you to simplify and focus on essentials—composition, light, and value—leading to noticeable skill improvement.

Natural surroundings also spark fresh ideas and emotional responses that don’t happen in the studio. There are people joined by a common reverence towards nature, who are (overwhelmingly, in my experience) supportive, intelligent, and helpful.

Painting in public can be intimidating at first, but it builds confidence in your process and helps you become more resilient as an artist.

Lastly, we teach workshops in places that are beautiful—in my case, Maine, the Berkshires and Sedona—and wonderful to paint.

The Surf is Cranking Up, 8X16, oil on linenboard, $903 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

And sometimes there’s profit in it

Mark Gale sent me this over the weekend: “As I was prepping paintings for a pop-up market, I found myself including a couple from a painting series I took with Carol Douglas. Then I realized I have sold paintings from in-person workshops and other Zoom series with Carol. Yes, she will make you a better painter. She also has an uncanny ability to deliver intangible extras. Students from across the country meet, form relationships and stay in touch. Carol’s alums have an enduring community. And sometimes, that piece you thought was just a class exercise, ends up in the hands of a happy customer.”

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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The Royal Coronation Portraits

Coronation portrait of Queen Camilla, 2025, Paul S. Benney, courtesy National Gallery

By the time you read this, King Charles’ and Queen Camilla’s coronation portraits will have been picked over by the media. They aren’t innovative, thank goodness, because official portraits shouldn’t be.

Camilla’s coronation portrait is more accessible, but then again, she takes the better photo. Her painting has long sweeping diagonals and painter Paul S. Benney has managed to give her a hauteur she never achieves in life. There’s just enough pattern in the regalia to set off the simplified form of dress and background. Of course, her dowager’s figure has lost about twenty years, but that’s typical. If there’s anything I don’t get, it’s why her hands are so small.

Coronation portrait of King Charles III, 2025, Peter Kuhfield, courtesy National Gallery

Charles’ coronation portrait, by Peter Kuhfield, is more complicated, and I think that makes it a better psychological portrait. His regalia is wearing him, which is how I picture him each time he makes a public appearance in his three-piece grey suit, top hat, umbrella, tie pin, boutonniere, pocket square and glace shoes. He’s always dapper, but he’s a shrinking, rounded, elderly man and has allowed himself to be painted so.

In the portrait, his face is in shadow, without distinct modeling. He’s been struggling with cancer for two years. For Kuhfield to have captured that sense of fading away is insightful, sad and terrible.

Pity the poor person tasked with doing a portrait of a king or queen. Portraits are difficult enough. Add to that the demands and demanding schedules of princes of the realm. Clothing and figure will done with stand-ins or mannikins (as was the case with Nelson Shanks’ portrait of Princess Diana).

Hans Holbein did a drawing of Henry VIII which was widely copied by other artists in lieu of getting the king to sit at all. In his older years, the king was infamously irascible, cruel, and intolerant, with a noted inclination toward murder. It’s no surprise portrait painters kept their distance.

While not a coronation portrait, the Armada Portrait, c. 1588, is a fierce statement of Elizabeth I’s authority. The globe represents England’s imperial might. She faces the calm English seas, and away from the storms of Catholic Europe. And the mermaid symbolizes her power to sink those Spanish ships. The imperial crown asserts Elizabeth’s right to rule. And all those pearls associate her with Artemis.

Until the age of photography, all we knew about kings and queens was what we learned from their paintings. Thus we believe Anne of Cleves was beautiful because Holbein painted her that way. That was despite Henry complaining that, “She is nothing so fair as she hath been reported…  [if] it were not that she had come so far into my realm, and the great preparations and state that my people have made for her, and for fear of making a ruffle in the world and of driving her brother into the arms of the Emperor and the French King, I would not now marry her. But now it is too far gone, wherefore I am sorry.” What a mensch.

Queen Elizabeth II, semi-mette cibachrome print, 2 June 1953, Cecil Beaton, courtesy Victoria and Albert Museum, London. While this was taken on the day of Queen Elizabeth’s coronation, it was actually shot at Buckingham Palace. Beaton dubbed in the Lady Chapel at Westminster Abbey in his darkroom.

Queen Elizabeth’s coronation portrait

Queen Elizabeth II had some real stinkers painted of her, among the worst being by Lucien Freud in 2001. Freud’s error, I think, is in trying to impose a psychological state on her portrait. A famously private woman, she wasn’t giving anything away. The best are the 1955 Pietro Annigoni portrait and Andy Warhol’s 1985 screenprint, which don’t try to pierce that screen.

But it’s in her photographic portraits by fashion photographer Cecil Beaton that we see something of the woman behind the throne. Theirs was a long relationship. Elizabeth first sat for Beaton in 1942. Over the next three decades he photographed the Queen on many significant occasions, including her Coronation Day in 1953. But he also took pictures of her family life, and there’s an intimacy to his pictures that paintings don’t seem to capture.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Caravaggio and the Papal Conclave

The Pope’s favorite: The Calling of Saint Matthew, c. 1599-1600, Caravaggio, courtesy Contarelli Chapel, Church of San Luigi dei Francesi

I watched eagerly as Cardinal electors arrive for the Papal Conclave in Rome, which starts today. Although I’m not Catholic, the Papal Conclave is a fascinating glimpse into history. The College of Cardinals have been doing this (with periodic irruptions) since 1059 AD. Only four have been held in my adult lifetime.

Much hay has been made recently about the late Pope Francis’ love of Caravaggio, in particular The Calling of St Matthew. Michelangelo, painter of the Sistine Chapel, is the artist most associated with the Vatican, but so also are Raphael, Caravaggio, Bernini, and Leonardo da Vinci.

The difference between those others and Caravaggio isn’t his chiaroscuro, as radical as it is. It’s the humanity of his figures. Although his figures are dressed in late 16th century finery, there’s an everyman quality to them that we recognize immediately.

Conversion on the Way to Damascus, 1601, Caravaggio, courtesy Cerasi Chapel, Santa Maria del Popolo

Francis’ love of Caravaggio is ironic, considering the difficulties the artist had with his sometimes patron, Cardinal Scipione Caffarelli-Borghese. Borghese was the nephew of Pope Paul V. When Paul V was elected Pope, Borghese was made a Cardinal, the papal secretary and the effective head of the Vatican government. Of course, he amassed great power and wealth. With that came the capacity to steal vast collections of art.

Included were several Caravaggios. Among them, Borghese appropriated Caravaggio’s Madonna and Child with St. Anne, commissioned in 1605 for a chapel in the Basilica of Saint Peter’s. It was rejected by the College of Cardinals, allegedly because of its earthly realism and unconventional iconography. However, archives show that Borghese rigged the deal from the start so that the altarpiece would end up in his own collection.

Virgin and Child with Saint Anne (Madonna with the Serpent), 1606, Caravaggio, courtesy Galleria Borghese

Caravaggio was temperamental to start with, but his treatment by Borghese couldn’t have helped. In 1606, he fled to Malta after murdering a gangster in a street brawl. I recently saw two of his paintings there: The Beheading of Saint John the Baptist (which is enormous and dark) and Saint Jerome Writing (which is intimate and accessible). These are in St John’s Co-Cathedral in Valletta, which was one of many exuberantly-Baroque churches, basilicas and cathedrals we toured. At the end of my visit, I felt if I spent much more time in all that gilt and paint, I’d be an atheist.

This is of course, unfair. I’m a New England evangelical, which means my church style is austere.

Saint Jerome Writing, 1607, Caravaggio, courtesy St. John’s Co-Cathedral, Valleta

Having said that…

I’ve heard people say that the gold in St. Peter’s should be melted down and the money given to the poor. That’s absurd on the face of it, since every bit of gilt there is in the form of artistic masterpiece, worth many times the nominal value of the metal.

The truth is that without the church, there would be no western art. All artistic expression from the Middle Ages until the Enlightenment hangs from the power and energy of the church. The church created modern western art as we know it, including that which followed the church age.

The Reformation unleashed a wave of iconoclasm across Northern Europe and England in the 16th century. The result was the destruction of more paintings than were ever saved. The church not only commissioned great art, it has preserved it. That was sometimes in the face of danger, as in the case of the Ghent Altarpiece.

Let the games begin

Meanwhile, the Papal Conclave begins its stately procession to elect the 267th recognized pope. Let the intrigue, speculation, false starts, and rumor begin!

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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Monday Morning Art School: what we can learn from JMW Turner

The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838, J. M. W. Turner, courtesy National Gallery

We’ve just marked the 250th birthday of Britain’s great Romantic artist, Joseph Mallord William Turner. As with so many great painters, Turner really didn’t become Turner (the prefigurer of modern painting) until he was closing in on old age. While there are many lessons to be learned from his work, here are two that stand out to me:

The Fighting Temeraire

The Fighting Temeraire was once voted Britain’s favorite painting. It’s featured on the £20 banknote, which also includes the Turner quote, “Light is therefore colour.”

The painting shows the 98-gun HMS Temeraire being towed up the Thames by a paddle-wheel steam tug, to be broken up for scrap. The Temeraire was one of the last second-rate ships of the line left from the Battle of Trafalgar in 1805. Her role had been pivotal in the deadly sea battle between the British Royal Navy and the fleets of Spain and France. Vice-Admiral Horatio Nelson was killed when his flagship, HMS Victory, was battered by the French ship Redoutable. In response, Temeraire surged forward, raking Redoutable with grapeshot, causing her to strike her colors. The victory confirmed British naval supremacy and prevented Napoleon from ever again considering invading England.

The Fighting Temeraire is generally taken as an elegy for faded national glory. But modern interpretations focus on Turner’s admiration for newness, as epitomized in Rain, Steam and Speed—the Great Western Railway. In that view, Turner was actually painting the steamship and arguing for leaving the past behind.

The Slave Ship, 1840, J. M. W. Turner, courtesy Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The focal point is not always the subject

Yes, the main focal point of The Fighting Temeraire is inarguably the steamship; it’s the passage with the greatest contrast. (It, and the amorphous shape in the foreground right and the sun on the horizon are the three focal points, forming a strong triangular composition.) But that doesn’t make it the subject of the painting. Turner explicitly tells us otherwise with his title and the careful prep work he did for the painting. The moonlight, the wrecker’s flag (not the Union Jack) and the detail on the Temeraire tell us we’re to read this all of a piece, together. Long before anyone talked about focal points and subject, he was playing them against each other to make a complex statement.

Rain, Steam and Speed – The Great Western Railway, 1844, J. M. W. Turner, courtesy National Gallery

Making the jump from linear to painterly

Painterly vs. linear is not a quality distinction, but rather a stylistic distinction.

A painting is linear when it uses skillful drawing, shading and contour to create the illusion of dimensionality. Painterly means there are visible brushstrokes, less control, and more impulsive color. While there have always been artists on the painterly side of the divide, the real historic divide is with the Impressionists, who slewed off into painterliness in the latter half of the 19th century. We have, for the most part, stayed on that side ever since.

Like his peers, Turner was a linear painter until sometime in the mid-1830s, when suddenly he wasn’t anymore. The mature Turner stopped painting line and became a painter of mass, tone and light. He treated land, air, and water, as if they were all one. “Indistinctness is my forte”, he said. This being the onset of Victorian England, with its rising tide of realism and of sentimental Landseers and Pre-Raphaelites, it’s hard to imagine how he struck out in such a unique direction.

Turner when he was linear: Cologne, the Arrival of a Packet Boat in the Evening, c 1826, J. M. W. Turner, courtesy The Frick Collection

Did Turner wake up one morning and decide to make soft miasmas of color? No; you can see hints of this in earlier paintings. Somehow, by poking at it, day in and day out, he came up with something new to himself and everyone else. We can learn a lot about painterliness from studying his paintings, but ultimately we have to do the studio time, too.

Reserve your spot now for a workshop in 2025:

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What is style in art?

Athabasca River Confluence, 9X12, $696 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Mystery writer Ngaio Marsh studied painting at the Canterbury College School of Art in her native New Zealand. Artists figure in several of her novels. As you might expect, she had intimate familiarity with their habits and careers.

“Don’t try to acquire a manner till you’ve got a little more method,” painter Agatha Troy tells a student in Marsh’s 1938 novel Artists in Crime. It’s an important idea, since style grows naturally from technique.

Marshall Point, oil on archival canvasboard, 9X12, $696, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What is style in art?

Style has different meanings depending on context, but we all know it when we see it. The major families of painterly style are:

  • Realism, representing the subject as accurately as possible.
  • Impressionism, focusing on fleeting impressions of light and color.
  • Expressionism, emphasizing the emotional and psychological.
  • Abstraction, or non-representational painting.

Within them, however, are myriad other subdivisions, defined by the choices we make in each of the elements of design.

Lobster pound, 14X18, oil on canvas, $1594 framed includes shipping and handling within the continental US.

Don’t overthink your own style

I’m all for understanding our own points of view; that’s the deepest discipline in painting (and life). Yes, style ties our work together in one body, and it ties us to a specific time and place. It’s the art historian’s best tool for classifying artwork.

But style should develop naturally. Forcing it stymies development. While we should study the technique of great painters, imitating their style is a sure path to irrelevance.

It takes some deep scratching

Good painters choose truth over stylishness, even to the point of seeming awkward to their contemporaries. They investigate thorny questions, not just about the world, but about painting itself. When they’re answered, these artists move on. Often, by the time they get through the cycle of making and mounting a body of work, they’re no longer that interested in it. There’s another struggle engaging them.

Owl’s Head, 11X14, oil on archival canvasboard, $1087 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Each time we pick up the brush, there’s variation in how we approach painting problems. That’s why it’s important that you have facility with big brushes, small brushes, palette knives, detail, broad strokes, and tiny strokes. Even if they’re not part of your regular repertoire, they increase your versatility and scope.

Don’t box yourself in

‘Embrace your style’ is a trap that painters may not be able to escape.

There’s a difference between style and being stylish. I enjoy fluid, assured brushwork. That’s not styling; it’s self-confident skill.

Direct and unconscious

Sometimes, what people call style is just technical deficiency. Style for its own sake can be a ruse to cover up badly-conceived paintings. “People often mistake verbose for skill,” a reader once mused. “The best writing is direct and almost unconscious. I think the same thing is true of painting.”

Mature artists don’t generally think about style so much. At that point, style is the gap between what they perceive and what comes off their brush. That’s deeply revelatory, and it can be disturbing when we see it in our own work.

Some of us try to cover that up with stylings, not realizing that those moments of revelation are what viewers hunger for. They, and not the nominal subject of the piece, are the real connection between the artist and his audience.

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When words matter most

Back It Up, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

My friend Clif Travers and I did a residency together at the Joseph A. Fiore Art Center. That was an opportunity to meet artist Lois Dodd, who came by one night for supper, along with painter David Dewey. I was rather starstruck, since I’m an unabashed fan of Dodd (and Dewey, for that matter).

Dodd proceeded to give a short, pithy and entirely constructive critique of one of my paintings. She made her point without in any way making me feel bad, and I walked away having new ideas and even more respect for her talent.

Compare that to a critique I’d had fifteen years earlier, by a pastelist and faculty member at a distinguished American university. “It looks like an immature Chagall,” she said. I went home and destroyed the painting by trying to make it more abstract.

(Sadly, I can’t find images of either work, although the corpses might be lying around here somewhere.)

Stuffed animal in a bowl, with Saran Wrap. 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435.

When words matter most

I’ve regretted wrecking that painting ever since. As a much more experienced painter, I think her criticism was simply wrong. She was simply saying, with her New York fin de siècle myopia, that while dreams and memory were fine, she had no time for highly-representational painting. (I no longer love that smoothly-rendered realism myself, but she had nothing to do with that development; plein air did.)

The part of that story that embarrasses me is not what she said, but my response to it. I should have set it aside and tried again on a different canvas. But I rushed into revisions while not even realizing how angry I was.

I was an experienced painter at the time; what made me flare up so badly?

Possum, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

Most artists are sensitive about their work; it’s deeply personal. Making it exposes our most private thoughts and feelings, which are in turn wrapped up in our identity and worldview.

Furthermore, we put a significant amount of time, energy, and dedication into our work. We can laugh when the uninformed say, “my kid could do that,” but when a respected practitioner dismisses it without care, that’s another issue entirely.

Art is also a means of communication, so negative feedback can strike at a deeply personal level. That’s especially true if the work is part of a creative leap forward, when we’re already feeling a sense of risk. Or, in the case of my painting, when the subject is deeply important.

Tin Foil Hat, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $435 includes shipping in continental US.

Watch what you say

Artists are, believe it or not, human. Harsh or careless criticism is demoralizing.

There’s often a power imbalance between the critic and the subject, which shouldn’t be taken lightly.

I was once panned in a newspaper review, and it made me cry. There’s a difference between helpful feedback and tearing something down. Good criticism helps artists grow; careless or mean-spirited commentary stifles creativity.

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