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Challenge yourself

Cinnamon Fern, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

I have a friend with the unfathomable habit of rereading Marcel Proust’s À la recherche du temps perdu once or twice a year. (I tried it once and didn’t get halfway through.) Recently I asked him why he finds the novel so compelling. “Any mental activity is easy if it need not be subjected to reality,” he answered.

This week I had a surprise visit from a man who studied painting with me during his junior and senior years in high school. He was an extremely disciplined, hard worker and had scholarship offers from the nation’s top art schools. He graduated from Rhode Island School of Design and after that he just stopped painting. He’s taken occasional workshops with me but he doesn’t stick with it, despite my nagging.

American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

There are many reasons people don’t pursue careers in art. They are worried about money (in particular, their student loans), competition, and the seemingly random way the market rewards artists. After all, for every thousand workaday artists like me, there’s a celebrity making bank off art.

Our society doesn’t respect art as a career, so many young artists are under social pressure to ‘get a real job’. Or, their guidance counselors push them into more stable career paths before they ever leave high school.

These are not foolish considerations. Anyone considering an art career ought to, at the minimum, take some business classes along the way.

Cottonwoods along the Rio Verde, 9X12, oil on archivally-prepared Baltic birch, $696 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Challenge yourself

The deepest problem of all lies in the perfection of our fantasy life. As long as I never pick up a brush, I’m a genius in my own mind. It’s that disconnect between our mental activity and reality that makes us so afraid to drill down.

Worrying about what others will think if you fail is one problem. Worrying about what you will think if you fail is even more crippling. We’re all under so much social pressure to succeed that failure seems like an unbearable outcome. What if I’m terrible… or even worse, mediocre?

That leads to setting extremely high standards for ourselves, where even our minor mistakes feel like failure. That would erode anyone’s confidence.

Hail hitting the Cockscomb Formation, Sedona, 8X10, oil on archivally-prepared Baltic birch, $522 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What can we do about it?

Another artist who started about the same time as my young friend had nothing special in his early work. He did, however, have determination. He’s not overtly competitive and he didn’t get wrapped up in the end result. Instead, he kept quietly plugging away at the process. Today he’s painting beautifully and people are noticing. He’s an inspiration on the days when I just don’t feel like getting moving.

When we start pushing paint around, we all discover how flawed we really are. If you need reassurance on this point, look at Vincent van Gogh’s early work. There’s very little indication of the master he would ultimately become.

Insecurity is, sadly, the artist’s closest companion. That’s ultimately good; it means we’re constantly striving to be better. Still, it can overwhelm us, so it’s important to identify and challenge our self-defeating thoughts before they take root.

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How to negotiate when you sell paintings

All Flesh is as Grass, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

The Maine coast gets its share of mega-yachts and the people who inhabit them. A former gallerist of mine once had a visitor who made sure to mention the fabled locations in which his second or third homes were located. He seemed very interested, but didn’t bite on any paintings. The next day, he came by and said, “Let’s see how hungry your artists are this morning.” That man needed a stake driven through his heart.

With the notable exception of Frederic Church, most artists are not noted for business acumen. (If they were primarily motivated by money, they’d do something other than sell paintings.) In 2023, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the 2023 median wage for a fine artist in the US was $52,910 per year. Those of us who are self-employed (almost all of us) provide our own insurance and retirement savings.

Deadwood, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072.00 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

That makes it easy to pressure an artist for a discount, but the question is whether you should. That’s doubly true if you’re negotiating through a non-profit. You’re also trimming proceeds for the organization.

Negotiation is the key to a happy life

I once did a show with a painter who asked, “Would you ask the telephone company to take 10% off your bill? Your dentist? Your plumber?” Well, actually, we do ask for discounts, all the time. It’s really no different when we sell paintings.

Art buyers, like everyone else, want to think they’re getting their money’s worth. Appearances can be deceiving. They may be driving a nice car but not have much loose cash. Asking for a discount is perfectly reasonable, but so is saying no.

On either side of this discussion, you can’t invest the process with something it’s not. It’s not a hunt to beat down the price; nor is it any kind of validation of the artist’s work.

Winter lambing, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Listen more than you talk

Some days I wish I’d just shut up. A good life lesson in any situation is to remember that communication is a two-way street. It’s not necessary to answer every objection or comment. If you give people enough time, they’ll probably understand your position on their own.

Is it really worth it to stand your ground?

The last time I was asked to cut a price, I did it but wasn’t thrilled. Then I sat down with my pencil and realized that my net out-of-pocket was $45 (it was a gallery sale). It would have been absurd to walk away from a sale for pin money, but my first response was emotional, not intellectual.

On the other hand, it’s also OK to say no

Some offers are so absurd that you don’t even need to think about them. Some are more difficult to parse, and it helps to do a little seat-of-the-pants math. If nothing else, it buys you time to think. If a person is set on not spending more than X, I may steer them towards something they can afford. But if it becomes clear that there’s no middle ground, I just smile and wish them well.

The Harvest is Plenty, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

A word about payment

I accept Square and Paypal when I sell paintings because we live in a cashless society. Part of the reason for their high fees is that they offer some protection against the many scams targeted at artists. I only accept checks in person or from people I know well. And, yes, I will let people buy paintings on layaway; it is a great option for the sincere collector who has limited resources.

Do you believe in the quality of your work?

Thomas Kinkade once bet a million dollars that his work would be featured in a major museum. That’s not confident; that’s delusional. However, most artists I know—including some absolutely brilliant painters—tend to be hypercritical of their own work. That’s not fair, either.

Yes, we all have bad days, but if you don’t recognize the quality of your work, who will? I don’t think “fake it ‘til you make it” works with self-confidence. If deep down you really think you don’t deserve to sell paintings, you won’t sell paintings.

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Monday Morning Art School: the twenty-brushstroke painting

Mike Prairie’s twenty-brushstroke painting, in watercolor. He did the whole thing with a single 1.4″ dagger brush.

When I told my Composition and Brushwork students they were going to complete a finished work in twenty brushstrokes, they were skeptical. “You’re going to demo,” they insisted. Once they realized it was easier than it sounds, they—not to put too fine a point on it—nailed it.

Baby spruce in snow, a twenty brushstroke painting by me, in oils.

What will you learn?

The twenty-brushstroke painting is an exercise to loosen up our painting. It emphasizes simplicity, efficiency and intention. It means prioritizing the essential elements of composition. That teaches us to focus on what matters most.

Painting is always about strategy. Limiting the number of brushstrokes forces you to plan carefully before you start. You must think ahead about where each stroke will go, what color it will be, and how it contributes to the overall painting. This sharpens your ability to observe and distill a subject into its most important elements.

That is the basis of making bold, deliberate marks rather than overworking, hesitating or flailing around. Simplifying helps you see larger shapes and forms instead of getting mired in details. Since you can’t rely on detailed rendering, you are forced t focus on strong contrasts, values and color harmony to convey thoughts and feelings.

Lynda Mussen’s twenty-brushstroke painting in oils.

The twenty-brushstroke painting frees us from perfectionism and encourages economy of movement and painterly efficiency.

I do the twenty-brushstroke painting when I’m tapped out. It encourages me to experiment and take risks. It’s almost impossible to do a twenty-brushstroke painting that isn’t energetic.

How do you start?

First I draw… always. In this case, I wanted to understand a baby spruce’s needle and branch structure before I started to abstract shapes.

The twenty-brushstroke painting isn’t necessarily easier and faster to do than a conventional painting. It’s more thoughtful, less frenetic.

Start with a simple subject with clear shapes. A subject with defined forms is easiest, but with practice you can pare down most complex subjects into striking, recognizable shapes. Strong contrast helps.

For my class demos, I snapped a photo of a baby spruce. I drew a careful rendering of the wee tree in order to study how the limbs and needles branched out into space. After that, I drew a composition drawing, because if a picture doesn’t work in greyscale, it’s never going to work in color.

My twenty-brushstroke painting in watercolor.

Since I was painting a baby spruce in snow, a complementary scheme of blue and palest peach was an obvious starting point. I mixed sufficient paint so that I didn’t run out in mid-brushstroke. This is almost counterintuitive in watercolor, where people tend to mix smaller amounts with a brush, but it’s a great skill to develop. You can modulate and mingle the basic colors as you go.

I always test my watercolor strokes on a sheet of scrap paper to make sure the value, hue and chroma are exactly what I want. In oils, I can generally see the chromatic relationships on my palette. Knowing that value is the most important element of color, I get that straight first.

Each stroke is deliberate, with no dithering, correcting or overpainting. Brushstrokes should vary in length, texture, pressure and direction, but every one should have a purpose.

Work from the general to the specific. If you save details for the end, you may find you don’t want or need detail at all. In the watercolor painting above, I used one brush, a squirrel mop. In my oil painting, I used a #10 flat, a #6 bright, and a wee thing that was probably unnecessary. Mike Prairie used this dagger brush for his whole watercolor painting; I was so impressed I now want one myself.

Stop after each stroke to assess the overall balance and composition. Above all, resist the urge to overcomplicate matters.

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Dogs in art: ten great dog paintings and why I love them

I could easily be a crazy dog lady; instead, I satisfy my dog cravings by carrying pocketsful of dog treats and sharing them out along my morning hike. I also like painting dogs myself; they’re soulful, elegant creatures. But here are ten great dog paintings for your weekend.

El Perro, c. 1819-23, Francisco Goya Museo del Prado,

Writing about Francisco Goya on Wednesday got me thinking of his masterpiece, El Perro. Goya is considered the bridge to modern painting. El Perro has influenced generations of painters, not just because of its bleak representation of vulnerability and isolation, but for its beautifully controlled use of space.

Cave canem Roman mosaic at the entrance to the House of the Tragic Poet in Pompeii, Italy, 1st century AD

Cave canem is Latin for “beware of the dog.” This mosaic makes me smile not just because the idea is timeless, but because the dog looks like he’s more likely to lick your face than to bite.

Homer, 2003, Jamie Wyeth

The Wyeths, père et fil, are great sources of dog paintings. I once had a scruffy Jack Russell terrier who was the spitting image of this fellow. Jamie Wyeth may have been thinking of Winslow Homer, but he’s also caught wet, shivering dog perfectly.

Equinox, 1977, Andrew Wyeth

Andrew Wyeth named his dog after Nell Gwyn, the “pretty, witty” mistress of King Charles II of England and Scotland. The woman was earthy; the dog is aristocratic. But if 17th century portraits are reliable, they shared very pale coloring.

Eos, A Favorite Greyhound of Prince Albert, 1841, Sir Edwin Henry Landseer, courtesy Royal Collection

Sir Edwin Henry Landseer’s most famous dog painting is The Old Shepherd’s Chief Mourner, but I am partial to Eos, A Favorite Greyhound of Prince Albert. The dog, the color structure and the composition are all fantastically elegant.

A Couple of Foxhounds, 1792, George Stubbs, courtesy the Tate

George Stubbs is primarily known as a painter of horses, but he was equally facile with dogs, moose, and the odd kangaroo. This pair seem to be having an almost-human interaction.


A Limier Briquet Hound, c. 1856, Rosa Bonheur, courtesy Metropolitan Museum of Art

Rosa Bonheur is another painter known primarily for animal paintings. I have no idea what a Limier Briquet Hound is, but this fellow looks like my Brittany spaniel buddy, Cody.

Dynamism of a Dog on a Leash, 1912, Giacomo Balla, courtesy of Albright-Knox Art Gallery

I used to see Giacomo Balla’s futurist portrait of a dachshund back in my hometown of Buffalo. Today, motion studies are old hat, but this was a revolutionary idea back before fast cameras. He got it just right; I have a little dachshund friend, Bear, who moves just like this dog.

The Painter and his Pug, 1745, William Hogarth, courtesy the Tate

The Painter and his Pug is a clever 1745 self-portrait-within-a-painting by William Hogarth. His dog, Trump, is sitting in front of the framed self-portrait. Trump lived for 15 years and Hogarth painted him many times; he considered the dog a symbol of his own pugnacious character.

Screened Porch, Robert Bateman, courtesy Art Country Canada

Last but certainly not least is Screened Porch by Canadian painter Robert Bateman (which you can buy in print form here). Anyone who’s ever cohabitated with a dog knows this look. Pathetic.

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How do you paint human suffering?

Extreme fire behavior in North Kennebunkport Maine during October 1947, courtesy Maine.gov.

The Great Fire of 1947

For my friend Barb, Maine’s Great Fires of 1947 are not distant history, but part of her family’s story. She’s from Kennebunk and grew up hearing about them from family members who were there.

The wildfires killed 16 people and burned over 200,000 acres statewide. They were centered in two distant places: Mount Desert Island and southern Maine.

1947 started with a sloppy, wet spring, but the rain stopped in July. By early autumn, Maine was perilously dry. State and local officials encouraged citizens to prepare. Fire towers that normally closed in September were reopened.

On October 7, fires started independently in Portland, Bowdoin and Wells. York County was hardest hit. Shapleigh and Waterboro were burned out. The cities of Biddeford and Saco and towns of Alfred, Lyman, Newfield, Kennebunk, Kennebunkport, Arundel, Dayton and Wells sustained significant fire damage, although their downtowns were saved.

Last fall, I was deeply troubled by the dryness of the woods in New York and New England. I told myself, “We never have forest fires here.” How wrong I was.

Aftermath of the Great Galveston Hurricane, courtesy Galveston Historical Society

The Great Galveston Hurricane

The 1900 Galveston Hurricane struck the Texas Gulf Coast on September 8, 1900. It destroyed the city of Galveston and claimed between 6,000-12,000 lives.

Back then, tropical storms were tracked and reported by ocean-going vessels. Spotters used weather glasses and natural phenomena like cloud formations to predict the weather. In Cuba, a Jesuit priest named Father Lorenzo Gangoite, reading those signs, figured the hurricane was heading to Texas. Our own nascent Weather Bureau ignored them.

The Saffir–Simpson hurricane wind scale wasn’t invented until the 1970s, but scientists think the hurricane made landfall as a Category 4 hurricane with winds of 135 mph and a storm surge of 15 feet. It washed over the low-lying barrier island.

Galveston rebuilt but never regained its economic dominance That shifted inland to Houston.

“A view across the devastated neighbourhood of Richmond in Halifax, Nova Scotia after the Halifax Explosion,” William James, courtesy Canadian Armed Forces

The Great Halifax Explosion

On December 6, 1917, two ships collided in busy Halifax (Nova Scotia) Harbour. The SS Mont-Blanc was a French cargo ship loaded with explosives including TNT, picric acid, and benzol. SS Imo was a Norwegian ship heading to Belgium with relief supplies.

At 9:04 AM, fire broke out on the Mont-Blanc, igniting its cargo. The explosion was about equal to 2.9 kilotons of TNT. It created a pressure wave that leveled much of the surrounding area, shattering windows as far as 80 km (50 miles) away, and lighting fires across the city. A massive fireball rose nearly 2 kilometers (1.2 miles) into the sky. The explosion was so powerful that it created a tsunami.

Over 1,900 people were killed instantly or in the immediate aftermath. About 9,000 more were injured from flying debris, burns, and the collapse of buildings. Thousands were left homeless. Buildings within a 1.6 km (1 mile) radius were obliterated.

Relief poured in from around the world. Boston sent medical personnel, supplies, and emergency equipment to Halifax within hours of the explosion. (To honor this, Nova Scotia sends a Christmas tree to Boston every year.)

The Third of May, 1814, Francisco Goya, courtesy Museo del Prado

Can an outsider paint human suffering?

The greatest artwork on the subject of human suffering is Francisco Goya’s The Disasters of War, and the paintings that relate to it, starting with The Third of May, 1808. The Peninsular War shattered Goya’s mental and physical health.

Guernica, in comparison, is at an emotional remove. Pablo Picasso painted it while in Paris. No matter how deeply he felt the tragedy, it wasn’t his own human suffering. I think that’s an unbridgeable chasm. And while I wish I could paint what I feel about the current wildfire crisis, I’m still profoundly glad I’m not there.

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Monday Morning Art School: gallery and studio light

American Eagle in Drydock, 12X16, $1159 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

“Can you give me information on lighting for artists, especially lights that work well for watercolor painting?” asked my friend and sometimes-student. â€œI have a new table setup in a permanent spot now, but it doesn’t have much direct or indirect light from the windows in that room (they are under our deck on the east side of the house) and I am looking to purchase a light that will give me good natural lighting to paint by.”

It’s a pity she doesn’t have natural daylight, since it is the standard by which all studio light is measured. But we all sometimes need to work in less-than-optimal conditions.

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

The evolution of gallery and studio light

I’ll spare you the candle and gaslight, which were mostly obsolete by my childhood. Besides them, I’ve had incandescent, compact and regular fluorescent and LEDs (Light Emitting Diode) in my studio and gallery spaces.

Fluorescent lights are now illegal in my state and many others. Incandescent and halogen lamps are being phased out, but are excellent light sources for color quality.

In recent years, we’ve adopted LED technology. It’s more energy-efficient, longer-lasting, and offers greater design flexibility. LEDs offer color temperature shifting and dimming potential.

LED lights are now the most common choice for most lighting applications, but that doesn’t mean they are the best for color rendering.

Switching to LEDs can lead to a reduction in color accuracy, which we express as Color Rendering Index (CRI). The higher the CRI values, the closer a light source will be to natural daylight.

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

Color Rendering Index and more

“Daylight” balanced bulbs are a start, but they’re not the whole story. What’s most important is the CRI, which is 100 for daylight and usually 80 for LED, which is too low for accurate color. A few years ago, the best you could get in an LED was a CRI of 85. Today you can get CRI-90 and even 95 bulbs.

The CRI number indicates how accurately a given light source renders colors in the space it illuminates. Natural white light from the sun is a combination of all colors in the visible light spectrum. It renders the colors of objects accurately. Incandescent and halogen bulbs also have a CRI of 100, because they’re also broadband.

CRI is calculated by measuring individual colors and then averaging them. However, it doesn’t include some outliers, including R9 (red) and R13 (skin tone) colors. If you’re primarily a figure painter, you might choose light sources with high R9 and R13 values, in addition to a high CRI. How do you find that information? In the tedious small print on the manufacturer’s website.

Cinnamon Fern, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

How do LEDs work?

LEDs make white light by combining red, green, and blue LEDs in the same light source or by incorporating white phosphors on a blue LED to generate white light. That isn’t a full spectrum, which means that some colors are missing in the light reflected to you.

LED technology is advancing every day, and getting closer to representing the full color spectrum in white LEDs. The LED bulbs in my gallery are CRI-90 and tunable, with five different color settings.

My gallery has conventional track lighting, but the fixtures aren’t the important issue. Just make sure you have enough fixtures so the light is more ambient than focused.

Reflected light

The cleanest color light can’t override brilliantly-colored walls. My studio has natural wood shiplap, it makes everything too warm. Doug doesn’t want me to repaint my studio walls white (I don’t blame him; they’re natural wood). In the daytime it’s not a problem; at night, white reflectors help.

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Our artistic legacy

The Wave, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869, includes shipping in continental US.

When the wind pummels my studio incessantly (as it’s done for the last week) Willa Cather’s lines come to mind: “…the wind sprang up afresh, with a kind of bitter song, as if it said: ‘This is reality, whether you like it or not. All those frivolities of summer, the light and shadow, the living mask of green that trembled over everything, they were lies, and this is what was underneath…’” Cheerful woman, that.

Unlike Cather, I’m not obsessed with death; still, it’s sometimes worth thinking about. “When a person dies, a whole world is destroyed,” is something my Jewish friends say. It’s a variation on a Talmudic teaching: “Whoever destroys a single soul, destroys an entire world; whoever saves a single soul, saves an entire world.”

Full moon on Penobscot Bay, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard. I painted this as an experiment in strict symmetry, and to remind myself of a wonderful evening.

I was thinking about this as I reluctantly closed the last novel in a series by the late Canadian-American writer Charlotte MacLeod. Miss MacLeod suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, that terrible thief of minds. When she put down her pen in 1998 or thereabouts, several whole crazy worlds stopped.

Dorothy L. Sayers was more serious than MacLeod. She died while translating Dante’s Divine Comedy into English, but most of us know her creation Lord Peter Wimsey. That doesn’t make her scholarship unimportant; the hell that most of us visualize is for the most part Dante’s artistic legacy.

Nocturne on Clam Cove, 9X12, oil on archival canvasboard, $869.00 framed includes shipping in continental US.

What will be my artistic legacy?

When I die, my paintings will be part of my estate, inherited either by my husband or children. They might keep them, sell them, donate them, or burn them in the backyard. I’ve painted and sold enough work that it’s out there in the world regardless of what they do. I can’t predict whether the remainder will increase in value or make good firewood.

The biggest factor in the future value of your art is what you yourself have done to market it, but that’s by no means the only story. Vincent van Gogh might have lapsed into obscurity after his death had it not been for his brother’s widow, who recognized a marketable asset when she saw one. She needed to sell his paintings and, in the process, created his artistic legacy.

The primary value of your art after you die isn’t monetary (what the heck, you won’t be able to spend it) but in its future influence. Dead painters bring me joy every single day. If we can pay that forward, painting will be well worth the time and care we’ve lavished on it.

Wildfire remnant along the Transcanada Highway, painted en plein air in 2016. Wildfire is an annual occurrence in Alaska and subarctic western Canada; we don’t notice because they are empty spaces.

Nothing lasts forever

This week the Getty Villa was threatened by the Palisades fire. That’s the part of the Getty that contains Greek and Roman art, already in limited supply in this world. The collection survived in part because of its state-of-the-art design but also because its staff has been ruthless in clearing brush.

That area is home to many cultural landmarks as well as some of America’s most luxurious homes. It’s likely that a lot of art has gone up in smoke this week. While that’s small potatoes compared to the human cost, it’s a good reminder that nothing—including great art—lasts forever. The bottom line for each of us is our non-tangible legacy: our character, generosity, wisdom and kindness.

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Drawing on the right side of the brain

Beach Roses, 9X12, oil on linen. I’m only posting warm-weather pictures today in protest against this week’s howling Arctic winds.

I haven’t seen my copy of Betty Edwards’ Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain since the 1980s, so I can’t remember much about the drawing exercises. According to the internet, they were based on contour drawing, negative space, size relationships, shading, drawing from memory and drawing from imagination. These are all important concepts, and any drawing exercises will make you better at drawing. On the other hand, there was the whole gestalt thing, which was a trippy 1970s way of saying that drawing is greater than the sum of its parts.

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain is critically flawed in that it rests on the premise of a left-brain, right-brain dichotomy. That’s a theory that’s been scientifically debunked but never seems to die.

Spring Greens, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, $652 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

What was the ‘drawing on the right side of the brain’ theory, anyway?

When the first edition of Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain was published in 1979, brain science was comparatively primitive. Research into callosotomies (so-called split-brain syndrome) led to a limited and distorted understanding of brain lateralization.  

The theory that people are either left-brained (logical, analytical, and detail-oriented) or right-brained (creative, intuitive, and emotional) gained immediate traction. Lefties, of course, were supposed to be right-brain-dominant, and therefore artsy. You poor right-handers (about 90% of the population) were doomed to be engineers and accountants. You could loosen up the synapses by doing right-brain exercises, including that insidious art-school exercise, making righthanded people draw with their left hands. Lefties are more likely to be ambidextrous, so asking that of righthanded people was particularly unfair.

As an ambidextrous lefty myself, I was adept at mirror writing but mostly because I was bored out of my nut in school. Even today, nobody really knows what causes left-handedness. There’s no evidence that we’re any more creative than right-handed people, but a lot of us lefties were told we were ‘arty’ .

Apple Blossom Time, oil on archival canvasboard, $869 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Subsequent studies have failed to show any evidence that people are predominantly left-brained or right-brained, regardless of which hand they use. Moreover, brain activity does not align with personality traits. A 2013 study using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) of over 1,000 participants found no evidence of individuals showing a dominant use of one hemisphere over the other.

You need your whole dang brain

Certain functions like language processing and spatial awareness may be lateralized, but most brain activities involve collaboration between both hemispheres. That’s especially true of complex tasks and traits like creativity, intuition, or linear thinking. They happen all over your brain.

Furthermore, a tremendous body of research on neuroplasticity shows that the human brain is far from fixed. It can repair and change itself, sometimes in profound ways.

Spring Allee, oil on archival canvasboard, 14X18, $1594.00 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Why do I care?

Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain remains a best-selling drawing and pop psychology text, and the left brain-right brain theory has been accepted into our common folklore.

The fantasy that there’s a disconnect between logic and emotion, science and art, structure and creativity, goes back at least as far as Star Trek. It’s the biggest reason why people think they can’t draw.

I’ve got a friend who says she can’t do math but is a fine seamstress. What are alterations and patternmaking but geometry? Math, language and art are all whole-brain activities, and they mesh together. It’s a lie that you can’t do one of them because of how your brain is wired.

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Monday Morning Art School: Edgar Payne’s compositional armatures

Dawn along Upper Red Rock Loop Road, Sedona, 20X24 oil on canvas, $2318 unframed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Tomorrow I start teaching a class on composition and brushwork. In preparation I’m building an exercise based on Edgar Payne‘s Composition of Outdoor Painting. Thinking about each example has brought me back to the works of two brilliant designers, Édouard Manet and Wayne Thiebaud.

I don’t like using the same artist for each example. Instead, I try to mix it up, to demonstrate to my students that fundamental compositions have been used throughout history. Thiebaud was a celebrated modernist, but you can find Payne’s armatures in every one of Thiebaud’s paintings. Despite his pop art color and subjects, he rested everything on classical design.

No Northern Lights Tonight, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, $348 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Edgar Payne wrote his book more than eighty years ago, and it’s still the best composition book I’ve read.  You can see the images here, or you can learn to apply them in one of my painting classes or workshops.

Rookie error

Beginning painters think those armatures are about placing objects. Instead, they are always about value (light or dark), although that value sometimes takes the form of an object. There are times when objects and shadows mingle; for example, a large piñon and some small creosote bushes can combine with their shadows to form a dark triangular mass. But it’s always the weight of the darks and lights that holds a painting together, not the nominal subject matter.

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

Paintings compel not because of detail but with value. It’s not enough, for example, that an object runs at a diagonal; you must make a persuasive shift along that diagonal. This is the primary lesson of Winslow Homer’s incredible seascapes.

Composition rests on the following principles:

  • The human eye responds first to shifts in value, and following that, in shifts in chroma and hue;
  • We follow hard edges and lines;
  • We filter out passages of soft edges and low contrast, and indeed we need them as interludes of rest;
  • We like divisions of space that aren’t easily solved or regular.
High Surf, 12X16, oil on prepared birch painting surface, $1159 includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Let’s talk about our feelings

Just as Payne distilled the basic structures of paintings into simple shapes, he also recognized that artists can use certain structures to provoke feelings. For example, clashing shapes provoke anxiety, while unbroken horizontal lines are fundamentally calm.

Music, sculpture, poetry, painting, and every other fine art form relies on internal, formal structure to be intelligible. This is easiest to see in music, where the beginner starts by learning chords and patterns. These patterns are (in western music, anyway) universal, and they’re learned long before the student starts writing complex musical compositions.

Music is an abstract art because it’s all about tonal relationships, with very little realism needed to make us understand the theme. A composer doesn’t need little bird sounds to tell us he’s writing about spring. Likewise, the painter doesn’t need to festoon little birdies on his canvas to tell us he’s painting about spring. That should already be apparent in the light, structure and tone of his work.

The strength of the painting is laid down before the artist first applies paint, in the form of a structural idea-a sketch or series of sketches that work out a plan for the painting.

All good painting rests on good abstract design. Still, most realist painters don’t spend nearly enough time considering abstract design, even when they understand the critical importance of line and value. Andrew Wyeth’s Christina’s World doesn’t rely much on hue or chroma for its impact. It’s a washed-out pink, a lot of dull greens and golds, and a significant amount of grey. And yet it was the most successful figurative painting of the 20th century, because it sublimated everything to a simple armature—Payne’s ‘three-spot’.

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Sell your work like the luxury good it is

Breaking Storm, oil on linen, 30X48, $5579 framed includes shipping and handling in continental US.

On Wednesday, I asked, “If an idea is so easily interchangeable that anyone can do it, what is the value of the brand itself?” In response, my friend and student Sandy Sibley sent me this article, in which fashion editor Katharine K. Zarrella calls out luxury fashion for its decline in quality and exclusivity.

She criticizes luxury brands for shifting focus from craftsmanship to profit, fueled by social media-driven consumerism, celebrity endorsements, and ‘buy now, pay later’ schemes. These have made luxury items ubiquitous, less exclusive, and often shoddy.

Zarrella argues that luxury is in a death spiral, with some companies reducing prices, selling through outlets, or racking up losses. She encourages consumers to reject overpriced, low-quality goods in favor of more meaningful purchases.

This may be luxury fashion’s loss, but it’s the artisan’s gain.

Winter lambing, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Are paintings luxury goods?

“I’m not sure I would consider fine art as luxury goods,” mused Bobbi Heath, “but that’s probably because I value paintings way, way more than handbags and shoes and perfume.” Well, me too, but that doesn’t mean fine art doesn’t meet the economic definition of a luxury good:

  • Luxury goods see an increase in demand that is proportionally greater than the increase in income. As people’s incomes rise, the demand for luxury goods increases at a faster rate.
  • Luxury goods are not necessities; they are purchased to enhance one’s standard of living, prestige, or personal satisfaction.
  • Luxury goods are expensive compared to their non-luxury equivalents.
  • Luxury goods are seen as a superior product or status symbol.

Oddly, while the best of fine crafts have always been considered luxury goods, fine art isn’t usually called by that name. Until the modern era, painting served practical purposes as well as aesthetic ones. But try thinking of your fine artwork as a luxury good, and see how that affects your marketing.

Deadwood, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072.00 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

Pricing and selling art

My student has made a careful study of what the art market in his rural area will bear. He prices his work accordingly. Prestigious galleries take the opposite approach, choosing swank locations in which to sell extremely expensive paintings. (The current correction in the high-end art market may reflect the same problems that Zarrella pointed out in the fashion industry.) There are, of course, thousands of examples in between these two extremes. Nobody but you can determine exactly where you should fall.

Ralph Waldo Emerson is reputed to have said, “Build a better mousetrap, and the world will beat a path to your door.” That’s never been true. Selling anything, but particularly paintings, is all about brand recognition. Get your name out there by participating in shows, using social media and advertising, and then worry about pricing.

All Flesh is as Grass, oil on linen, 30X40, $5072 framed, includes shipping and handling in continental US.

In every situation, it makes sense to market your work in the slickest way you can, in clean, well-ordered spaces and with on-trend frames.

Luxury goods are not sold by discounting. Instead, focus on creating a compelling brand, providing exceptional customer service, emphasizing exclusivity and quality, targeting the right audience, and offering personalized experiences to cultivate a sense of prestige and value around your work.

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