John Singer Sargent and Carrara marble

This is a study of a task that is common to these man: wrangling massive ropes in the service of moving huge slabs of marble.

Rediscovering John Marin, American Watercolorist

He was ambidextrous & worked with brushes in either hand. The freshness of his work proved his restraint.

Magic wands. Tools of the Trade?

When the brushes used for calligraphy were completely worn out, artists wrapped them in silk and buried them in a beautiful place.

Essential Tips for Watercoloring Outside

American watercolorist, John Singer Sargent frequently painted en plein air from a gondola in the water rising and falling in the canals of Venice.

To paint a snowdrift, stand knee-deep in snow.

It you feel the ice cold snow in your boots, you know you are in the right place. This is the mindset of a “plein air” painter.

Where do ideas come from? What’s the source of creativity?

I dream of watercolor paint swirling together while, as the observer, I watch and contemplate what color is being created.

Beauty In the Birds-Eye Mind of the Beholder

An experiment in coaxing wild birds to see my point of view. Was it successful?

Cursive writing. No longer relevant?

Cursive text from a journal my grandfather carried through Europe in 1900…the same paintings, sculpture and churches I visited more than 100 years later. Seeing the text in his own hand is powerful. Can I absorb more of my grandfather’s personality by the energy and grace he conveys through his cursive?

Catastrophe Averted: Painting in Peril

Blackberry Jam: Understanding the Cosmos A number of years ago I was working on a very detailed series of large watercolor paintings – (32 x 22” and larger) when a disaster threatened to destroy a very important painting. This painting, that I had been working on for about 40 hours, was due at a juried […]

Emerging Art Form: QR codes

Constraints as a Channel to Creativity Most artists will admit, there is something creatively exhilarating about constraints put on the creation of your work. Some art exhibits require work done in a certain medium–like the Transparent Watercolor Society’s requirement that the art actually be completed in transparent watercolor– not opaque. Or the challenge of a […]