A Man with a Plan

Emerging, 6 x 6″ ink, newsprint
“I found that if I planned a picture beforehand, it never surprised me, and surprises are my pleasure in painting.”
- Ives Tanguy
“Without planning, your painting will probably be indecisive and fragmented, and you’ll try to say too much in one picture.”
- Ron Ranson
So which camp do you fall into?
I must [...]

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Something New…

red balloon
escapes the child’s grasp
sunrise floats away

New Day, 6 x 6″ monoprint
“Poetry is good for unleashing images.”
- Paula Rego
I am planning on periodically adding short haiku poems I’ve written to my postings, as this is a poetic form I’ve become interested in. Traditionally the pairing of haiku with painting is known as haiga which appeared [...]

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Doing Beauty

Shoji 1, 6 x 6″ monoprint
“Let the beauty of what you love be what you do.”
- Rumi
I’ve always loved this quote from Rumi – actually had it on my website homepage for years. What great words for an artist to live by. We “do” beauty, which makes the word more than an empty adjective.

Now beauty [...]

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Simple or Complicated

Oriental Grunge, 10 x 15 acrylic, ink
“In mathematics the complicated things are reduced to simple things. So it is in painting.”
- Thomas Eakins
As artists we are taught that it is better to simplify what we put in our paintings – as Robert Browning said, “less is more”. When we start to paint objects or the [...]

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Avoiding the Straight and Narrow

Ikebana 1, 10 x 15″ acrylic, inks
“When the snake decided to go straight, he didn’t get anywhere.”
- William Stafford
Our artistic paths have a trajectory that is unique to each of us. About the only thing they have in common is that they are not straight, often to our dismay. It seems like we’d get to [...]

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The Artful Life

Dreamcatcher, 11 x 15″ acrylic, ink
“The object isn’t to make art, it’s to be in that wonderful state which makes art inevitable.”
- Robert Henri
Maybe if we focus more on what this state is and how to get ourselves into it and less on making art, more art would get made.
While this state may be different [...]

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Naked Painting

Dreamweaver, 11 x 15″ acrylic, ink
“You must learn [...] to manifest the wildness of an artist. This wildness has many faces. It is an amalgam of passion, vitality, rebelliousness, nonconformity, freedom from inhibitions. Think of this wildness as ‘working naked’.”
- Eric Maisel
Maisel recommends taking this literally -  take off your cloths to paint! He mentions [...]

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Beginnings and Endings

Graffitix, 9 x 9″ acrylics, ink
“Genius begins great works; labor alone finishes them.”
- Joseph Joubert
Do you feel excited when finishing a painting? Do you feel like you are in the grip of a creative impulse? How would you compare your feelings, emotions, state of mind at the end of the painting process to what they [...]

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