Watch Me Paint: World-Class Art, World-Class Instruction
The Red Truck, oil on canvasboard, Carol L. Douglas I believe that creativity rests less on freedom than on structure. I’m not the only person who’s discovered that genius requires discipline: from this Navy SEAL asserting that everything starts with making your bed to Mason Currey’s Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, the idea permeates current …
It’s a parent-led insurrection, and it’s about losing local control. Today marks the beginning of New York State Assessment for ELA and math grades 3-8. It’s my understanding that some districts will require non-compliant students to sit for the duration of the exam and do nothing. “Basically none of our children will be allowed to …
Theresienstadt painting by Ela Weissberger “I remember thinking in school how I would grow up and would protect my students from unpleasant impressions, from uncertainty, from scrappy learning,” Friedl Dicker-Brandeis wrote in 1940. “Today only one thing seems important — to rouse the desire towards creative work, to make it a habit, and to teach …
The Harvest is Plenty, 36X48, by Carol L. Douglas On Friday I had the opportunity of hearing Dr. James Romaine give a gallery talk at Roberts Wesleyan. He described a piece of art as working in three spheres. There is the material—your technical approach to the work. There is the subject. The meaning comes from …
The Mamaroneck River, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas My teaching year ends at the beginning of June, when I start my summer wanderings. So I was conflicted when V— contacted me about lessons. She is a well-known lithographer and designer. Normally I’d jump at the chance to have her join us, but there’s …
Renocation of the Kirkland Hotel, acrylic on canvas, by Bruce Bundock. Remember my pal Bruce Bundock from Kingston? He’s on a roll this year. The catalog for his Faces of Vassar is out. And he is featured in this month’s Acrylic Artist Magazine as one of five winners in the 60th anniversary show of the …
Start with your pigments. Yesterday, it was so warm that I went outdoors in my loafers without socks. There’s still two feet of snowpack out there, but winter’s back is broken. Yes, it will snow again between now and Easter, but it can’t last. That means that it’s time to get your plein air pack …
Winter Lambing, 36X48, oil on canvas, by Carol L. Douglas It’s that season when artists gather up their slides—by which I mean the JPGs on their desktops—and send them off to be juried. Technology has advanced so that we now get the same kind of results with a point-and-shoot camera that we used to rely …
The Heart of the Andes, 1858, Frederic Edwin Church. It is useless to imagine this painting from a photo; it has to be seen. You can do that at the Metropolitan Museum in New York. There’s a Humboldt Street in Rochester, a Humboldt Parkway in Buffalo, and various fixtures named Humboldt across our country. I …
The ‘controversial’ street art that earned Combo a beating. On Monday I wrote about the responsibility of artists to tell the truth. In the United States, we are reasonably safe from persecution, but that isn’t the case in France. Last month 17 people were assassinated and 22 wounded in a series of terroristic attacks that …