Christmas was wonderful again this year. One of my gifts was a new palette. My homemade one is decrepit, as you can see in this photo. I prepared the new palette–a glass-covered reproduction–by removing the reproduction and painting the backing neutral gray. The old palette, including the frame, is the same size as the glass…
It started snowing Thursday afternoon and didn’t stop until Christmas evening. Six-inches of snow with knee-high drifts, as you can see in this photo taken from our dining room on Christmas morning. Every year we resolve to restrict the number of gifts to a manageable number, and every year we fail horribly, as you can…
I want adventure. When I started, art was an adventure. When I confronted a landscape, a figure, or whatever, it was an adventure of discovery. I saw it for the first time. Each time I started a painting, I had that experience. Guess what? I still do! You might think I’m exaggerating, but I’m not.…
I couldn’t wait to get started today. Problems are simply opportunities and everything is possible. You know what I’m talking about? I put aside some large designs that have been absorbing me and started working on this painting, Self-portrait with Camera. I’m happy with some bits of it. The painting has a white ground, which…
I’ve been using flake white from Utrecht a lot. Lately, I’ve run into the same problem, namely, tubes with excessive oil content. When I open a fresh tube, a lake of oil pours out. That is what happened with the last tube I opened. You can see what I mean in this photo. I placed…
Stiff paint, stiff muscles, stiff brain. This describes my afternoon. I finished a painting this morning and celebrated with a piece of pumpkin pie leftover from Thanksgiving. Back in the studio, I started working on this large painting that is in mid-career. Not in the starting stage but nowhere near the finishing stage either. I…
In Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, the protagonist studies painting for two years in an atelier school in Paris. At the end of that time, he screws up his courage to ask the master if he actually has talent. The master tells him that his talent is modest; he will never rise above mediocre. This…
I’ve had this experience a lot lately. Maybe you have too. You reread a book that you once admired only to discover that it doesn’t resemble in the least what you remember about it. When I originally read Somerset Maugham‘s Of Human Bondage, I thrilled at Maugham’s description of Bohemian Paris where we follow the…