Watch Me Paint: World-Class Art, World-Class Instruction
I’m off to Maine and Rye! I’m leaving some of my favorite landscape paintings for you—works by Canada’s mighty Group of Seven painters. I love them because they combine the freshness of impressionism with a love for the northern landscape. The Edge of the Maple Wood, 1910, AY Jackson As a young boy, Jackson worked …
Continue reading “Seven Days of the Group of Seven—AY Jackson (1882-1974)”
I’m off to Maine and Rye! I’m leaving some of my favorite landscape paintings for you—works by Canada’s mighty Group of Seven painters. I love them because they combine the freshness of impressionism with a love for the northern landscape. The Tangled Garden, 1916, JEH MacDonald At the age of 14, JEH MacDonald moved with …
Continue reading “Seven Days of the Group of Seven—JEH MacDonald (1873-1932)”
Artisan Tostitos? Seriously? I’m thinking of a new advertising slogan: Artisan Art. In a world where one can buy Artisan Bread, Artisan Cheese, and mass-produced Artisan Tortilla Chips,the term “artisan” has been devalued. May as well jump right in. During the Renaissance, the individuality of the artist was not of particular importance—he was celebrated for …
A lousy photo of a decent painting of the schooner Mercantile. Yesterday I posted that I was unhappy with the design of my Mt. Battie painting, and hoped to fix it by playing with the light. (I was hoping I could break the rigid horizontal at the bottom by making the contrast with the water …
Unfinished, Mt. Battie from Camden Harbor. Will either finish it or scrape it out tomorrow. The first day at Camden Plein Air dawned with great atmospherics—a light drizzle that had fizzled out by 10 AM. Threatened thunderstorms failed to materialize, and scudding clouds to the north over Mount Battie made for a constantly changeable sky. …
Carol’s set up of Durand Lake. Nice mackerel sky, heralding rain (correctly, as it turns out). I’ve painted at Durand-Eastman Park for years. I’ve painted on the beach, along Zoo Road, and most often on the embankment facing Durand and Eastman Lakes. These are steep-sided glacial fingerlings reaching back from the shore of Lake Ontario, …
Rising Tide at Wadsworth Cove, 16X12, oil on canvas. Available; please contact Lakewatch Manor for details. Saturday dawned fair and bright in lovely Castine, ME. I had a plan for my painting; I knew that low tide was at 9:21 AM; I had croissants and fresh local blueberries for breakfast. By 7:30, I was at …
Continue reading “Salvaging a fail (v. 2) and then messing up again”
Pamela’s lovely painting of Camden harbor. Yes, the sheds across the harbor are completely cockamamie. Nobody goes to a painting workshop expecting to do brilliant work, but my students have been painting at a high level. But into each life come a few tough painting days, and today was one of them. Pamela’s sketch for …
Winslow Homer, The Artist’s Studio in an Afternoon Fog (1894) We set out today to discuss Winslow Homer’s use of the diagonal in his coastal paintings. Could there be a more lovely example than The Artist’s Studio in an Afternoon Fog(1894), which is owned by Rochester’s own Memorial Art Gallery? And yet this painting proved even …
A recent Guardian columnsought to identify the ten best sea pictures of all time. I propose an alternative list, not the “best”—because the idea of “top ten paintings” is in itself ridiculous—but ten equally brilliant and perhaps less famous seascapes, here presented in no particular order. (My apologies to Turner and Monet; I only omitted …