In the kitchen
For the most part, I've stopped showing the early stages of my paintings. One thing that I've learned after running this site for 8 years is that readers assume that I only post finished work--the…
Category: aesthetics
Podcast-academic art
I pick up last episode's discussion about Clement Greenberg and the avant-garde and kitsch, and talk about academic art. Artists mentioned: Gerome, David, Bouguereau, Ingres, and Thomas Couture.
Turpentine diaries 3/3/19
Bah! I am grinding my way (trying to anyway) through a volume of Clement Greenberg's essays. In case you haven't heard of him, Greenberg was once considered the preeminent writer on post-war American art. Greenberg's…
Fat over lean
So you've embraced the two related studio aphorisms I discussed in this recent post: fat over lean, and make the lights thick but keep the darks thin. In practical terms what does this mean? Oil…
Turpentine diaries 12/31/2018
Art is filled with aphorisms. Fat over lean, for instance, is a famous adage. The meaning for this old saw that is the most straightforward is to paint thickly-applied paint over thinly-applied paint. Why this…
Turpentine diaries 12/16/2018
I finished Bench by the Lake in a short session yesterday. I hadn't looked at the painting for months before yesterday's session. It's not unusual for a painting to be in-hand for a long time,…
Turpentine diaries 8/19/18
For today's session with Lunch Alone, in addition to my usual medium, I used 'flavored' turpentine for my solvent: turpentine with some homemade drying oil, plus drops of Courtrai siccative. Readers of my blog know…
Review: Eyewitness Views
The Cleveland Museums of Art's Eyewitness Views: Making History in Eighteenth-Century Europe is the best show I've seen at the museum since I started my near-weekly visits six years ago. As good as the show…