Is the plein air festival losing its punch?
To be a successful artist, you have to catch the currents, not be driven by them. Downdraft snow in the Pecos, by Carol L. Douglas I still plan to travel, but the guts of my summer work moving forward will not be plein air events. Rather, I’m going to capitalize on my location and run …
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Monday Morning Art School: Carol comes a cropper
She asked me to draw a simple tree. How hard could that be? Velvet-flocked deer with double rainbow, by Carol L. Douglas. Behind the birch tree are marcescent leaves of a young red oak. Marcescence is the retention of dead leaves in trees over the winter. It’s natural in oaks, beeches and hornbeams, especially in young trees. …
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Prehistoric shapeshifters in equatorial Indonesia
Our ancestors were a lot smarter than we give them credit for. Megalithic stone in central Sulawesi. Photo courtesy of Oliver van Straaten We think we know the history of art, and then something comes along to upset that narrative. For example, it’s long been accepted that the first figurative art (which means art that …
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The Art of Sleeplessness
Our sleep cycle was destroyed by gas lighting and factory night-shifts. How do we get it back? Arkwright’s Cotton Mills by Night, c. 1782, Joseph Wright of Derby, courtesy Wikiart. As we close in on the winter solstice, dusk falls at a little after 3 PM here. My ancestors would have crawled into bed early …
Monday Morning Art School: what I learned from losing 50 pounds
I rapidly gained a hundred pounds after my first cancer in 1999. It’s taken me this long to get serious about getting rid of it. As I reach my halfway goal, I realize that much of the discipline of losing weight is the same as the discipline of learning to paint and draw. Peppers, by …
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