Tag: Visual Arts
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Shining the Artistic Light
One of the most rewarding things about teaching art workshops is the wonder of how unique artistic talent is to each individual. I don’t teach workshops where everybody expects to paint the same thing and have them all come out looking like a row of cookie cutter canvases. The freedom for each artist to express…
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Gotta Start Somewhere
Botanical Style painting is what I return to over and over when I’m in need of soothing and stress relief. Even painting broccoli can be soothing.
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Flower of the Misplaced Month
One of the best things about May is the colorful outbursts of iris blooming every where you look around Tennessee. The bearded iris is the state flower so no self-respecting Tennessee garden can be found without at least one variety of iris gracing the mid to late spring garden. Though purple is most often associated…
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Art and Soul
Realizing all art came from a Creator much bigger than us little humans forced me to look at art in a way I never had before.
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Crashing Tales
“Don’t spend time beating on a wall, hoping to transform it into a door.” Coco Chanel (from The Painter’s Keys) One writer sees the culture of creative people as “crashing” leading him to lament about the state of the current art world. He believes artists are seen as “cultural elites” “idle dreamers” or “self-indulgent parasites.”…
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Passing Fancy
“Fads are the kiss of death. When the fad goes away, you go with it.” Conway Twitty (from Brainyquote) Who or what will be in the spotlight of art for 2014? What does it take to make it into the spotlight, the center stage? An idea, a painting, a poem, a sentence, a photograph that…
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Felt or Flat
“The best and most beautiful things in the world cannot be seen or even touched, but must be felt with the heart.” Helen Keller (from Skinnyartist) If a painting, a piece of music, a poem, a story, a performance, a photograph is so beautiful it touches the heart, it is considered a great work of…
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Word Games
“Criticism is easy, art is difficult.” Destouches (from The Painter’s Keys) Why do artists need guidance and assistance to write about their art? It’s a fact for many artists. Creating a painting is one thing, describing the process of how that happened is another. An artist knows, usually, why a subject or theme moves him…
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Weekend Inspiration–Looking to Each Other
“You can look anywhere and find inspiration.” Frank Gehry (from The Painter’s Keys) Dry spells, days without inspiration, lack of incentive can happen at anytime to any artist. You show up at the studio, sit in front of an empty canvas or paper and nothing happens. Nothing is working. You looked to all your usual…
