On Doing Your Best
All through grade school & well into college, I habitually obsessed over tests & homework assignments. Hoping to allay my anxieties, my parents would always tell me, “Just do the best you can.” Naturally I understood, equally well at age 9 as at...
On Talent
Last night was the artist reception for a group of students from the gallery where I teach on Saturdays. It was held at the Hanover Park (Illinois) Village Hall where, for the last 6 years, our students have been invited to exhibit their work during the summer...
On Beginning Again
Initially, my intention was to name this blog On Beginning in order to create a sense of symmetry with an earlier blog I wrote called On Finishing. In that blog, I made the point that finishing a painting is much more daunting for me than starting one: Whereas I can...
On Coming Full Circle
For the couple of years before his death, Edouard Manet, contemporary of the French Impressionists & painter of the controversial Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (Luncheon on the Grass), was forced by the exigencies of a worsening illness to leave his beloved...
On Bouquets
Around this time of year, Tom & I love to put on our jackets – or our parkas & mittens, as the case may be – & go into the backyard to look for signs of new life. We poke our fingers in the mulch to see if the tulip bulbs are showing any green tips...
On Finishing
Recently I finished a painting that I had been working on for many, many months. Conventional wisdom has it that there is nothing so frightening to an artist as a blank canvas but in my experience, the reverse is true: Completing a project is much more...
A Tale of Two Beaches
Nearly a year ago, when I stood on Captiva Island at the water’s edge & looked out across the Gulf, the view was pleasant enough albeit, as beach stories go, rather banal. Yet when I turned & began strolling along the water, the view suddenly became a visual...
More on Beaches
“The greatest meeting of land & water in the world” is how watercolorist Francis McComas described Point Lobos, the California State Natural Reserve located at the north end of Big Sur, but in reality, his passionate pronouncement could just as well be applied to...
On Beaches
In February Tom & I spent a week on Captiva Island, just off the southwest coast of Florida. Each morning at daybreak, after a quick cup of coffee, we pulled on shorts, t-shirts & flip-flops, grabbed our windbreakers, shelling implements (Tom) &...
On Movies
Recently I’ve been watching some of my favorite movies again, or I should say, “listening” to them, for I find it very soothing to engage my auditory sense while standing in front of the easel, toiling away on a painting. Usually I listen to various lecture...