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Learn to like your own paintings

Cape Breton Highlands, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, click on image for more information. I’ve illustrated this story with paintings I didn’t like when I did them, but that I like now.

My friend Bobbi Heath and I were talking about external validation recently. We agreed that sales mean something, awards mean something and students mean something. To pretend otherwise is silly. When someone spends their hard-earned money to buy one of your paintings, or a juror selects your work for an exhibition or people tell their friends about you, these are all powerful forms of validation.

They mean that other people see something in what you’re doing. Your work is communicating beyond your own brain case. Since making art is such a solitary process, this can help remind you that you’re not entirely delusional.

Hare Bay, Newfoundland, 12X16, for more information, click on image. I was bummed by how grey this looked, but in retrospect realized that was because the day was, indeed, grey.

The problem with external validation

External validation comes too late. Before anyone buys your painting, you have to conquer your own fears and get into the studio and make the work. Before you get into a coveted show, you have to actually submit the work.

Palm tree, 6X8, private collection.

How to like your own paintings

I don’t mean, “Is it perfect?” I don’t mean, “Is it what I visualized?” (Neither of these will ever happen.) And I certainly don’t mean, “Will other people like it?” (That’s the road to paintings of kittens and sunsets.)

I mean: “Do you look at it and recognize something unique and powerful in it?”

Does it say what you wanted it to say? Does it have passages that makes you happy? Does the color excite you? Does the brushwork feel like yours? Does the composition have energy? Does it make you want to keep looking? More importantly, does it make you want to keep painting?

Oddly enough, even for experienced painters, this is something that waxes and wanes. I have come to loathe some of my paintings several times, only to turn around and realize they were actually pretty awesome. Other times, I don’t like a single thing I’ve done, only to look at that body of work six months later and be very happy with it. Worse, I’ve loved work of my own that now bores the pants off me. It’s a constantly-shifting sea of self-perception. That tells me that it is, fundamentally, unreliable.

In order to survive it, I have to keep looking for the parts that work and build on them. That might be a little turn of the brush, or one specific color. It could be an edge or the lack of an edge. Sometimes it’s the simple trudge to the studio.

Coal Seam, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, click on image for more details.

Our inner voices say failure

Artists are really good at looking at our finished paintings and seeing only their failures. We compare them to our friends’ work, or to our own ‘best’ work. We constantly assess them against that insidious perfect painting in our minds. That’s a great way to become discouraged.

Instead, ask what you did right

Then ask how you can do more of that.

This doesn’t mean you should stop listening to criticism. Quite the opposite. Critique is useful precisely because we can’t always see our own work clearly. Other people can point out weaknesses, blind spots and possibilities we missed. But it’s even better to learn to critique your own paintings.

Which brings me back back to sales, awards and students. They are evidence, of a sort, but they shouldn’t be why you like your own paintings. Many, many great artists have turned a blind eye to the world’s judgment in order to find their own voices. Many other artists earned many accolades only to be forgotten in just a few years.

Painting is a long game. There are lots of paintings that don’t sell, shows you don’t get into, competitions you don’t win. There are far more of them, in fact, than successes. If your only measure of success is somebody else’s response, you’re going to wait forever to believe you’re a good artist.

I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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Monday Morning Art School: best art supplies for beginners

Toy Monkey and Candy, oil on archival canvasboard, for more information, click on image.

I’m getting supply lists ready for my October workshop students. My watercolor students will be shocked that I’m actually going to suggest cheaper paper for color exercises. I generally say the opposite. Good materials matter more when you’re learning to paint than when you already know what you’re doing.

Nobody needs super-expensive brushes, paints, canvases or easels. But they need to be good enough to actually work. What are the best art supplies for beginners, and how can you tell where you should spend your money?

Hiking, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard. For more information, click on the image.

Learning to paint is hard enough without fighting your tools and supplies

If paint is weakly pigmented, you will never get the intensity you’re striving for. If it’s a ‘hue’ (a copy of a pricey pigment) you can’t mix to where you need to go. If a canvas is too cheap, it will suck up paint or feel unpleasant under your brush. Bad watercolor paper makes washes, lifting and dry scumbling dang near impossible. If brushes are badly made, you will never achieve the marks you’re seeking.

When these things happen, new painters often blame themselves. But they may not be the whole problem.

Where I do and don’t spend money in painting

Buy the best paint you can reasonably afford. 20th century pigments are cheaper and tend to be less toxic and more light-stable. You absolutely don’t need every color in the catalog. A carefully chosen paired primary palette of good paint is far more useful than a giant collection of mediocre colors.

Beginning painters buy too many different colors of poor-quality paint rather than a targeted few high-quality pigments; the net cost is the same, but the results are worse.

Many expensive pigments are, in fact, limited in application. The cadmiums are heavy and can be muddy. Others, like cerulean blue, can be mimicked quite successfully with less expensive pigments.

I don’t ever cut corners on brushes, but I don’t need a lot of them, either. I paint with a mixture of Princeton, which is reasonably priced, and Isabey and Rosemary brushes. You need fewer brushes than you think—a handful of shapes in different sizes.

And, for heaven’s sake, keep your brushes clean! Letting them harden up is a total waste of money.

Generally, I find that I’ve finished a painting using only two or three brushes. But good brushes teach you about pressure, paint handling, edges and brushwork.

Toy Reindeer with double rainbow, oil on archival canvasboard, 6X8, for more information, click on image.

Painting surfaces.

A properly prepared surface makes an enormous difference. This is particularly important for students because you’re trying to learn how paint behaves. Oil painters can add a coat of gesso to cheap boards, or make boards themselves. Sadly, watercolor students really need to buy good paper from the outset.

Quality, not quantity

Artists have been making excellent paintings with battered equipment for centuries. Some of the tools I’m using were my father’s. Once you know what kind of easel you want, look at Facebook marketplace; I bought my good Gloucester-style easel there. But beware of bad field easels available on Amazon; they’re a complete waste of money.

You can absolutely save money by making some things yourself. I sometimes make my own panels and many artists I know have fashioned their own wet-canvas carriers and brush rolls.

Prom Shoes 1, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, for more information, click on image.

Cheap materials are often expensive materials in disguise.

If a brush splays after your first painting, it was a rotten waste of money. Cheap watercolor paper may stop you from ever mastering washes.

I’m using up some burnt sienna oil paint I was given. It shocks me how much paint I need to equal the intensity of my regular brand (RGH). In watercolor, cheap paints will probably never give the intensity you seek at all.

Figuring out the best art supplies for beginners means figuring out where it’s safe to cut corners, and where it will hurt. This is where a good teacher is invaluable. As a student, you’re investing in something more important than materials: your ability to learn. Give yourself materials that support you, rather than hinder you.

I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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What’s wrong with beauty in art?

All Flesh is as Grass, oil on linen, 30X40. For more information, click on image.

Christopher Nolan’s adaptation The Odyssey has traded the traditionally vibrant colors (see the ‘wine-dark sea’) of ancient Greece for a brutalist, muted color palette dominated by browns, blacks, and greys.

No, I haven’t seen it; I read the book.

This grim, stripped-back aesthetic mirrors not the psychological weariness of Odysseus but that of our own age, what critic James Marriott called “the morbid 2020s.”

“We live in dark times, sure,” he wrote. “But I think it is possible to object to the way ‘more depressing’ has become synonymous with ‘more sophisticated.”

You can see our artistic moodiness in what major institutions lean into: cynical political gestures, sterile gallery spaces, and difficult themes. Our predecessors, who believed art was about beauty, inspiration and joy, would be baffled.

The Heavens Declare, 36X40, private collection.

Artists have always painted war, grief, poverty, death, injustice and political upheaval. I’m not arguing for an art world filled with kittens and sunsets. But somewhere along the way, we seem to have decided that serious art must also be depressing art.

This is also the culture we’ve raised our kids in. One example among many: my then-mopey teenage son was assigned Robert Frost’s ‘Out, Out—’ in high school English. Frost certainly had his dark side, but he wrote much that is beautiful and elegiac. ‘Out, Out—’ is depressing and terrifying. Why would anyone choose it to introduce teenagers to America’s most-lauded poet? If we want young people to fall in love with poetry, art or literature, perhaps we should show them why human beings have found them uplifting.

(In the meantime, suicide has become an extraordinarily prominent cause of death among young people. In 2023 it was the second-leading cause of death for Americans ages 10–14 and 15–24, according to the CDC.)

Deadwood, oil on linen, 30X40. For more information, click on image.

The alternative

“Art that ignores the remarkable persistence of the cheerful and silly parts of life will miss something profound about the human experience,” wrote Marriott.

As much as artists want to be relevant, political or dark, viewers really do crave beauty in art.

Beauty is not intellectually inferior.

Joy is not naïve, and optimism is not the same thing as ignorance.

When people encounter a painting that stops them in their tracks, they don’t want a polemic. They want to feel something. And joy and light are as much part of the human experience as the shadows are.

Art is not simply an exercise in documenting what is wrong with the world. It is also an opportunity to pay attention to what is right with it.

Winter lambing, oil on linen, 30X40. For more information, click on image.

How to create beauty in art

This is one reason I believe in painting from life. When you stand outside with an easel, you encounter the actual world rather than an endless stream of online images that have already been curated to a mass-media agenda.

Painting what is real is an inherently optimistic act. It requires you to acknowledge that what is in front of you is worth looking at. Judging by the established art world, that’s as rebellious as the Salon des Refusés was in 1863.

We don’t have to ignore suffering. We don’t have to avoid difficult subjects. We don’t have to pretend everything is wonderful. But we also don’t have to apologize for beauty.

Homer’s Odyssey ends with triumphant Odysseus restored to his throne and his marriage with the backing of divine law. In Nolan’s version, there are no gods, and Odysseus leaves in self-exile with Penelope by his side. To me, that says a lot about our current cultural malaise.

I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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Adult art education: you’re never too old to be bad at something

Cottonwoods along the Rio Verde, 9X12, oil on archivally-prepared Baltic birch, click on image for more details.

It’s been a more than a decade since my youngest graduated from high school, and I still approach this last week of summer with mixed feelings. I love teaching, but could never have survived in an American school.

“Good teaching,” wrote Mary Townsend, “is somewhat ineffable. There is no rule or measure that will be fully predictive of who will be good at it, or what methods they will follow to do their best work; you have to know it when you see it, within a long human chain of teachers as unbroken as possible; and the fact of the matter is, there will never be enough good teachers to go around. In this way, some of humanity’s perpetual frustration with school becomes more understandable; for even at school’s best, you still might not get to go, and so be forced to take your ambition elsewhere after all.”

No Northern Lights Tonight, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard. Click on image for more information.

Adult art education requires us to be beginners again

Adults come to art classes with something children don’t have: a lifetime of experience.

That’s a tremendous advantage. You’ve traveled, raised families, learned complex skills in other areas, solved problems, experienced death and loss and accumulated a vast mental library of images. Of course, there’s also a downside; you’ve also accumulated a lifetime of opinions about what is and isn’t possible. I hear these all the time:

“I can’t draw a straight line.”

“I’m no good at color-matching.”

“My hands aren’t steady enough.”

“I don’t have innovative ideas.”

No child ever says those things, but they’re the enemy of adult art education. Learning to paint requires the willingness to continuously recast ourselves as beginners, free of any expectations about what the process of learning should look like.

Kids expect to not know things. Adult learners are always embarrassed by what they don’t know. It’s very hard for us to start a new project with a complete willingness to screw up. That, my friends, requires courage.

Île d’Orléans waterfront farm, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, click on image for more details.

The power of positive criticism

My art teachers were excellent at separating the wheat from the chaff in my work. I never felt as if I were being personally criticized, but they still managed to impart technique. The best of them saw something nascent in my work and helped me develop it.

Those teachers also never flattered my incompetence by calling it ‘self-expression’. Instead, they gave me grown-up tools and then showed me what to do with them.

Those of us who have been extremely competent in other fields can find being in the middle of the pack a brutal experience. The first time I realized that I wasn’t the best painter in my class was the most eye-opening and sobering of my experiences at art school.

Of course, that’s where my real learning started.

Brooding Skies, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard. Click on image for more information.

Individual instruction isn’t that helpful

The Wyeths, père et fils, managed to teach their family members to paint one-on-one, but it doesn’t work for most of us. Individual instruction is too often a feedback loop. Other painters’ struggles inform our own. So do their solutions. The group is a critical part of adult art education, but that requires a good class and a good teacher.

Restoring curiosity

When we were children, we looked, wondered, experimented and puttered. Time had little meaning and deadlines really didn’t exist. We didn’t necessarily know what something was supposed to become before we began and we were generally satisfied with what we made, if for no other reason than that we’d made it.

Then adulthood happened, and we became results-driven rather than process-driven.

Painting, done right, has the power to reverse that. Painting is really just a series of mistakes that occasionally work out, after all. You try something, see what happens and then try something else.

This is not an escape from adult life. It is a richer way of inhabiting it, and it’s better for our blood pressure.

I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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Monday Morning Art School: accelerating your learning curve

Thomaston, ME, 14X18, oil on archival canvasboard. Click on image for more information.

Before I get into this morning’s post, a whole bunch of people have asked me for the dates of my 2027 Sedona plein air painting workshop. The trouble is, I no longer remember everyone who raised the question. If you were one of them, it’s April 26-30, 2027, and the link is below. That’s the only 2027 workshop date I’m committing to now; I have a daft idea up my sleeve and I’m waiting to see if it comes off. That doesn’t mean I’m not going to teach much in 2027, but if it comes off (a long shot) I’ll have to do some scrambling. I do still have two 2026 workshops in October.

Spring blossoms, Thomaston, 9X12, available but for some reason I’ve forgotten to list it on this website. I’ll get to that…

Watch but don’t copy

I used to stand near Alfred Colella in class at the Art Students League (ASL). He had a handwritten sign in his paintbox that read, “don’t copy.” It was directed at himself (not me) but it was a good reminder to all of us that we could be unduly influenced in that small, crowded room by the painters who were near us.

Still, the shared mutual energy in plein air painting workshops can accelerate your learning in ways that are difficult to duplicate when you’re working by yourself. You learn by watching other painters.

It was from another fellow ASL student that I learned about Michael Wilcox’s Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green. (No, you don’t need to buy it; you’ve got this blog.) And just last week I saw something arresting in a watercolor by Russ Whitten that I’ve filed under ‘lighting, cool ideas for’.

When you paint or study with other people, suddenly, you have ideas that spark your own thinking.

Maine Coast, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, for more information, click on image.

Accelerating the learning curve

“The shared mutual energies in plein air painting workshops help accelerate the learning curve,” Frank Costantino pointed out to me. He just took my Schoodic workshop in August. That both mystified and delighted me, since he’s a well-known architectural illustrator.

I go back and forth on the idea of synergy between painters. Painting is essentially solitary work, but it’s also a form of communication.

On the one hand, painting alone is wonderful. Nobody is looking over my shoulder. I can experiment, scrape out a painting, start another, or spend three hours painting one tree if that’s what I feel like doing. And therein, of course, lies the danger. It’s easy to get stuck, to perseverate on some dumb detail or another.

Plein air painting workshops are creative laboratories

Good plein air painting workshops aren’t me demonstrating and going “blah, blah, blah,” although I certainly can talk a lot. It’s an opportunity to address specific problems as a group. A good teacher is a facilitator of ideas as much as anything. Adult students come into painting from a wild array of backgrounds, with amazingly varied experiences. I often say I learn as much from my students as they do from me. What I’m doing is creating the environment for us to all spark off each other.

That energy begets more energy. That in turn leads to new ideas, and to the courage to try them out. Instead of learning only from your own successes and mistakes, you’re learning from the successes and mistakes of an entire group.

Off Pearl Street, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, for more information, click on image.

Then there’s the scenery

I’m experienced enough that I get to teach in Paradise, whether that’s Maine or Sedona. That means my students get to visit these places. And painting in them means they get to slow way down and see them in ways they would never experience if they were mere tourists.

I truly believe you can make a great painting anywhere, but, heck, new places are energizing. They give you new visual problems to solve. The compositions, questions and colors are all different from back home. What matters in this place? What can you leave out? What is the color of the light?

Painters need to learn to ask these questions. The problem with painting in our own backyards is that we know it so well, we don’t go back to these first principles. My goal is for you to return home with the ability to frame these questions every day, no matter what the subject.

I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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How does fast fashion influence art?

Beach Roses, 10X10 on sealed Baltic birch, for more information, click on image.

A young reader recently asked me, “How does fast fashion influence art for my generation?”

My mother, starting in the 1940s, bought silver flatware one piece per paycheck. This went into her hope chest, which (for my young reader’s benefit) was a trunk used by a young woman to store household items she collected for marriage. Mom’s assumptions today seem almost like a foreign country, but it’s the idea that she expected to use and love one style of silverware for the rest of her life that I want to talk about.

My parents modernized their old farmhouse kitchen when they bought it in 1965; it never changed before Mom died in 2014. Today, a house with a circa 2000 kitchen is outdated. That can easily be a $30,000–$50,000 project, done for purely aesthetic considerations.

So, I see my student’s point.

Pink Carnation, 8X10, oil on Baltic birch, currently on hold for someone.

Fast fashion has changed our relationship with objects. And that inevitably influences art.

My mother bought something because she expected to live with it for her lifetime. We increasingly buy things because they are trendy. Fashion changes. Colors change. Styles change. Quality takes a back seat to speed and price.

Yet art has traditionally been the opposite of fast fashion. A painting appreciates. It is intended to be something you live with for life and pass along to your kids. A good painting should hang so long that, yes, it gathers dust.

My kids live in a consumer culture of extraordinary speed: Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest and online shopping constantly bombard us with new things to want.

Grey Birches, 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard, for more information, click on image.

Tension, tension, I’ve got tension

On one hand, contemporary artists are inevitably influenced by the culture around them. We see different colors, compositions, patterns and subjects because of the world we live in. Our art should respond to that.

On the other hand, there are immutable truths in art: good composition, good value structure, solid color relationships, good brushwork. I might easily be painting a view that has been there for a millennium. And the tide comes in and out the same way it always has.

Eastern Manitoba River, 6X8, oil on archival canvasboard, click on image for more information.

Not everything needs to be replaced

One of the most interesting conversations I have with young people has to do with the price of art. Their benchmark is inevitably Wayfair or TJ Maxx/HomeGoods. I get that, since there was a time when the only original art in my home was that which I had made myself.

As I’ve gotten older, I’ve learned the cost of cheap things. Now I buy good shoes, good cars and good clothes, and I wear them out. Of course, none of the cheap art I once had remains anywhere in my house. And none of the good original art that I’ve carefully collected has ever needed to be replaced. That may be one of the best things art can offer to Gen Z: the idea that not everything needs to be constantly replaced.

The challenge for artists is not to pretend fast fashion doesn’t exist. It is to understand the visual culture it has created without becoming captive to its demand for novelty. We can make paintings that are contemporary without making paintings that are disposable.

And perhaps that is where generations can meet. My mother saved her silverware one piece at a time. I paint one brushstroke at a time. Both are ways of saying: this is worth keeping.

I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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That’s what you call transformation

Painting water at Schoodic workshop 2026. Photo courtesy Frank Costantino.

I told A. I’d send him information on easels when I was done with my August workshops.

Yesterday, he messaged me:

“When I came home from the workshop, I was so excited that I forgot that I should have waited to buy an easel. But I didn’t. In fact, I got one for going outside and one for my studio.”

He didn’t stop there. He turned his bigger bedroom into a painting studio, moved his bed into a much smaller room, and kept working on the painting he started during the workshop.

Then came this:

“Thank you so much for the great and perhaps transformative teaching. What a great week!”

That’s what you call transformation.

Not suddenly painting a masterpiece. Not suddenly becoming a different kind of artist. Transformation can be much more down-to-earth. In A.’s case, it meant coming home from a workshop and realizing that he wanted to paint badly enough to rearrange his house around it.

Learning to draw boats on the coast of Maine. Photo courtesy Frank Costantino.

Another true-love story

J. and T. stopped by to see me when I was painting in Camden last week. After that, they skipped off to Clark Island, where they went swimming. They’ve both ordered a drawing book I recommended because it’s really the next step in their painting evolution.

Anyone seeing them together would find it difficult to believe they were complete strangers a month ago. They were thrown together by chance at my Schoodic workshop and signed up for my October Color Clinic. “We’re both so motivated to learn and grow,” J told me yesterday.

That’s the part of teaching painting that I love.

Here’s another fine pair of my students, Mark from Texas and Beth from New York. They met up this summer to paint the verdant hills of the Genesee Valley.

What should you expect from a workshop?

A good workshop should give you more than a few pleasant days with your easel. You should come home seeing differently. You should understand something about your own process that you didn’t understand before. And, ideally, you should want to get back to work. If you don’t feel that fire in your gut, something’s wrong.

Color concepts at a picnic table. Photo courtesy Frank Costantino.

Color and composition aren’t academic exercises

Color and composition are the tools that let you turn what you see and feel into a compelling painting.

If color has always felt mysterious—if you find yourself mixing endlessly and still not getting the color you want—my Color Clinic is designed to help. We’ll dig into the relationships that make color work, rather than treating paint like a collection of magic recipes.

And if your paintings sometimes have all the right ingredients but still don’t quite hold together, take a look at Composition Week. Composition is where we learn to organize all those fascinating things we see into a painting that actually says something.

Neither class is about memorizing rules. Both are about learning the bedrock technique underlying great paintings. I want you to come home from studying with me and look at your easel differently. I want you to understand why a painting is working or not. I want you to have a process you can repeat when you’re standing in front of a blank canvas.

And yes, I want you to be excited enough to buy an easel before I can get around to sending you my recommendations.

That’s what you call transformation.

I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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Monday Morning Art School: moving from ‘I feel’ to ‘I think’

Painting from my trusty pickup truck on Bay View Street (courtesy Camden Public Library).

When I teach critique, I start by asking the artist, “what was your goal in making this painting?” I finish by asking the group, “What did you notice first?” and “How does this painting make you feel?” In between are questions based on the elements of design: focal point, line, value, color, balance, shape and form, rhythm and movement and texture.

Let’s start with the messiest question.

Curtis Island, 24X30, oil on canvas, painted for Camden on Canvas. Available.

How does this painting make you feel?

Before you know the technical mechanics of a painting, you know how it makes you feel. You may feel calm, unsettled, energized, curious, melancholy or delighted. If you feel nothing, then there’s no communication. That may on the artist, or it may be that you’re simply not interested in the message. For example, I am utterly unmoved by Frida Kahlo, although millions of people love her.

That first response is valuable, but don’t stop there. For painters, the informative part of art analysis is moving from ‘I feel’ to ‘I think.’

Painting at Curtis Island overlook (courtesy Camden Public Library).

Start with your gut

Your sympathetic nervous system, not your brain, is your first responder.

What happens in your body when you first see a work of art? Do you lean in or pull back? Want to engage, or are you repelled? Does your eye settle somewhere immediately? If so, where?

Don’t worry yet about explaining it. Just let the feelings wash over you.

Now ask why

Perhaps the key to why you feel peace in a painting is its broad, open composition, warm color, soft edges and low-key value structure. Or you might feel energized because the composition is dominated by sharp radiating lines, with clearly divided values.

Your feeling is the door. Art analysis walks you through it.

Artwalk (morning on Bay View Street), 24X36, oil on gessoboard, painted for Camden on Canvas, private collection.

But let your eyes lead

Don’t rush to explain what you’re seeing. In a class setting we are pushing to get through the process in the confines of a class schedule. That has one failing, which is that sometimes we need more time to simply look. For the painter, time is the most important tool in our kit.

We need to put down the brush and step back. We need time to wander through our own work.

  • Where do our eyes go first?
  • Where do they go next?
  • What do they keep returning to?
  • Where do they stop?

Your eyes are doing analytical work even when you aren’t consciously thinking about it. A painting’s composition, value structure, color relationships, edges, shapes and directional lines all influence how we move through an image. So let your eyes see before your verbal brain starts constructing an argument.

This is particularly important for painters. We often see something before we have the vocabulary to explain it. Trust that first response, and then investigate it.

From feeling to evidence

The goal of art analysis isn’t to prove that your first reaction was correct. It’s to discover what in the painting produced it. I know this is difficult, but in time it will become second nature. Hearing that voice inside your head will lead to better, stronger paintings.

Your response is part of the evidence

Your response matters, but it becomes more useful when you can explain it.

Start with ‘I feel,’ and let your eyes wander. Then ask ‘why’ and move from there to ‘I think.” That movement—from instinct, through observation, toward understanding—is one of the great pleasures of making and looking at art.

I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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Camden on Canvas: 21 painters, three days, one fabulous Maine landscape

An earlier painting for Camden on Canvas, 24X36, called “So Many Boats!” Private collection.

Camden on Canvas starts today! This annual plein-air painting fundraiser, hosted by the Camden Public Library, runs August 21–23, 2026. It’s brought 21 notable New England landscape painters to Camden and surrounding communities. And for all of you who’ve asked me if there are lots of artists in my neck of the woods, a rollcall reveals that a lot of us call midcoast Maine our home.

They are (in alphabetical order) Tom Bucci, Dan Corey, Ken DeWaard, Carol Douglas, Cooper Dragonette, Stephan Giannini, Roberta Goschke, Mary Ann Heinzen, Alison Hill, Jill Hoy, Eric Jacobsen, Nathaniel Meyer, Colin Page, Scott Redfern, Björn Runquist, Matthew Russ, Doug Smith, Marianne Smith, Janet Sutherland, Greta Van Campen, Michael Vermette, Russ Whitten and Peter Yesis.

For three days, we will set up our easels outdoors and paint the Maine landscape. As of this morning, I’m planning to start on Bayview Street, somewhere near Frye, and paint the street scene from the back of my pickup truck. But of course, the cloud cover, the light, and my mood will all influence where I end up. I suggest you stop by the Camden on Canvas Information Tent outside the library’s Atlantic Avenue entrance. There you’ll find information about participating artists, with a map showing where we’re painting. The tent is open from 9 am to 5 pm Friday and Saturday, and from 9 am to noon Sunday. You can also check the Camden Public Library’s Facebook page for updates on artist locations.

An earlier painting for Camden on Canvas, called “Sea Street,” 24X30, oil on canvas, private collection.

I’ve been doing this event since it started, and it’s a wonderful town-wide party that just happens to feature some great painters. We landscape painters are sometimes terrific storytellers and sometimes flat-out liars; the scene that surrounds us is filtered through our individual, subjective viewpoints. If you’ve ever been curious about how that works, the best way to really understand it is to watch fresh paintings develop from blank canvas to finished work.

An earlier painting for Camden on Canvas, done from on Bald Mountain, 36X24, oil on canvas, private collection.

And you can buy them, too

On Sunday, August 23, from 1 to 3 pm, these paintings will be displayed in a special wet-paint exhibit at the historic Camden Amphitheatre. (If you’ve never been to Camden, the amphitheatre was designed by Fletcher Steele and the park by the Olmsted Brothers. Both are worth a visit even without an art event.)

These paintings will carry the energy, brushwork and immediacy of a weekend spent painting outdoors.

The weekend culminates Sunday afternoon with a Reception and Live Auction from 4 to 6 pm at the Amphitheatre. Come see the paintings, meet the artists, enjoy light hors d’oeuvres and drinks and take home a new piece of Maine landscape art.

Auctioneer Kaja Veilleux of Thomaston Place Auction Galleries will get the bidding underway at 5 pm. He’s always entertaining.

An earlier painting from Camden on Canvas, of Curtis Island Lighthouse, 24X36, oil on canvas, private collection.

Best of all, tickets to the Reception and Live Auction are complimentary this year. Pre-registration is encouraged but not required.

The proceeds are split equally between the artists and the Camden Public Library’s Campaign for the Future, making this a fundraiser that supports both working artists and an important community institution.

As Library Executive Director Kristy Kilfoyle put it, Camden on Canvas celebrates “the power of creativity and cultural enrichment.”

I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters

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How to sell original art

Heavy Weather (Ketch Angelique), 24X36, oil on canvas, for more details, click on image.

I met a lovely lady in Lenox, MA last week. Twice she asked me, “how much is that painting?” Twice, she told me, “I can’t afford it.”

When someone says that, they’re usually not talking about price. They can be expressing uncertainty about their priorities, the timing or their interest. Those are all legitimate concerns. Still, understanding them helps us understand how to sell original art.

Price and value are two different things

Painting prices vary widely, based on skill, experience and public profile. A customer who doesn’t get that is unlikely to understand why one painting costs several times what another does. That’s true even if they understand implicitly why Ferragamo is priced differently from Uniqlo. Educating them on the difference isn’t a quick process.

For each buyer, the question is not what the painting is worth, but what that painting is worth to them. Your goal is to show them what they’re getting that they won’t get elsewhere. These are often intangibles like craftsmanship, exclusivity or even bragging rights.

Pensive 8X10, oil on archival canvasboard. Click on image for more information.

What do they mean?

“I can’t afford it,” is often followed by, “but I’m sure it’s worth every penny.” What they’re really saying is, “it costs too much for me at this moment.”

When I bought my car this spring, I had a number in mind, based on a web search. I drive my cars for a long time. When I started to carefully consider features, I realized that spending more up front would actually give me better value.

If, at the beginning of my shopping, I’d been asked if I could afford what I eventually paid, I’d have said no. I could afford it; I just didn’t want to spend money that way. I didn’t realize at the time that the higher price was worth it.

Luxury purchases are judged in years, not days

A great example is Princess Anne’s wardrobe. She buys fine pieces and wears them for decades. Original artwork is even more durable than her evening clothes. A good painting has every chance of becoming an appreciable asset or family heirloom. Twenty years from now, your buyers won’t even remember the purchase price, but the painting will continue to be valuable.

High Surf, 12X16, oil on prepared birch painting surface, for more information, click on image.

What makes your work unique?

Luxury goods are not always about more, better, bigger. They’re often about an indefinable quality that can’t be duplicated. There will always be less expensive paintings. There aren’t less expensive versions of your particular painting.

My painting prices represent my sales history, my profile as a painter, writer and teacher and my competence with the brush. What do your prices reflect? That is a hard question, but if you can’t answer it, how will you convey value to your customers?

Put the cost into perspective

Without minimizing the investment, help your customer realize that the painting they’re buying is meant to be appreciated and enjoyed for decades. Put that way, the cost is surprisingly low. This is especially important when talking to first-time art buyers, who may be subconsciously comparing your prices to Wayfair.

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

When someone doesn’t pick up what you’re putting down

I’m a lot more confident about the value of my work than I was thirty years ago. Ironically, confidence increases credibility. I’m not going to pressure anyone; it’s far better for both of us if the customer buys something he or she really loves than something they’re unsure about.

Pressure undermines luxury sales.

Never apologize for your price

Avoid statements like, “I know it’s expensive,” or “I wish I could make it cheaper.” Avoid justifications like “this represents thirty years of experience,” or “this work has eighty hours in it.”

Original art isn’t a necessity. It’s something people choose because it enriches their lives. If a painting speaks to the buyer, it’s probably going to sell itself. Your biggest job is to not undermine the sale.

Ultimately, art buyers don’t need to be convinced that the item is priced fairly. They need to be convinced that it is worth owning.

I have just two workshops left in 2026! Reserve your spot:

Can’t commit to a full workshop? Work online at your own pace:

Seven Protocols for Successful Oil Painters