THERE’S AND OLD JOKE in art circles about the painter who made the “best career move of his life”—he died. The painter’s body of work, or oeuvre, is now historical, worthy of elevation, at least if there is a writer or critic to magnify that legacy. Gaining this stamp of literary fame has worked since writers noticed the work of artists, alive or postmortem. . . .

IF I WERE TO WRITE a History of Plein Air Painting for Dummies, it would go something like this. At the dawn, we can assume a caveman, somewhere, had given outdoor painting a try with his red mud pigments. Even then, painting from life was a no-brainer. We truly start, however, with the late 1700s in France, an age of Romanticism’s worship of Nature. An academic named Valenciennes stunned his Neo-classical academy by saying it was good to go outdoors and do two-hour, even half-hour, oil sketches. The goal was the overall “effect,” not the details or polish. . . .

MODERN ART HAS HAD a love affair with psychoanalysis. And psychoanalysis has had a romance with the human face. No object enamors us more, apparently, and neuroscientist Eric R. Kandel, a Noble winner in medicine, has explored this art-and-biology tie as much as anyone. In his writings, and splendid book The Age of Insight—about the art and psychoanalysis renaissance in Vienna at the time of Sigmund Freud—Kandel has made much of how reductionism in science led to understanding the human psyche. It also led to great art, in particular, what now is called “Expressionism.” . . .

THE LATE BRITISH ART connoisseur Kenneth Clark published memorable books on the landscape and human figure in painting. Yet he seemingly ignored the topic of still life. Granted, he was a busy man, being an Oxford professor and head of Britain’s National Gallery. Still life, as the Clark case suggests, has long been the poor cousin of painting. Being a concatenation of inanimate objects, it has been subordinated to the higher world of historical events and Nature. Yet as visual a problem for the painter, and as a vehicles to talk about everyday life, the still life is nonpareil. . . .

EVERY SCHOOL CHILD draws in the classroom and at home. So why do so many modern-day “artist statements” begin, “When I was a child, I loved to draw?” All children love to draw, at least until they go on to other things. Today, the artist statement has become a mainstay for practicing painters. At art colleges, writing an artist statement is almost like a senior thesis. Nearly every art contest now requires an artist statement. And quite a few begin with, “When I was a child.” . . .

WHEN I WAS IN COLLEGE in the early 1970s getting a degree in painting, “photorealism” was afoot in the California art scene. This was alongside other kinds of “new realisms.” I saw some of the amazing photorealist works at art exhibits. And I was amazed at the verisimilitude of the drawing and painting. For some reason, I never dared to ask, “Did you actually draw that? Or did you project a photo image on your canvas?” It seemed like a rude query. . . .

NATIONALISM IS MUCH in the news these days. So it might be appropriate to ask, “What is the American national tradition in painting?” Tracing the question back, the first answer has to be that it was originally British painting. The first notable American painters had either come from England or studied there. . . .

WHEN THE FRENCH IMPRESSIONISTS banned the color black from their palettes, it was with good reason. A lot of dull painting of their time had admixtures of black. What art historians have now called “the brown school” of painting featured dark tones not far from blackishness. The study of pigment colors and the science of the light spectrum were just taking off in France and elsewhere at the end of the nineteenth century. And for all anyone knew, black was not a color, but the absence of color. The story is more complicated, of course. . . .

AT THE NATIONAL PORTRAIT Gallery in Washington D.C., the permanent “American Origins” exhibit features room after room of paintings of figures from America’s past. Given their uniformity in style, it is more a history lesson than an aesthetic experience. Yet even a good painter today can marvel at some of the techniques—skin tones, drawing, and glazing—that were considered first class in the nineteenth century. In one such room, amid the throng, is a self-portrait by Samuel F. B. Morse (1791-1872), once a very prolific American painter, eventually turned inventor and politician. . . .

AN “OPEN STUDIO” FOR a painter, that is, an organized group that pays a model to sit, is a cherished opportunity for “painting from life” the human figure, clothed or not. The benefits always outweigh the demerits, but herewith I look at both. . . .

PAINTERS OF ART have long had an unrecognized audience. Don’t think “collectors,” think “novelists.” Writers of fiction have frequently found their main characters in painters, and their settings in the art world. And since the twentieth century, this trend has emerged full-blown in mysteries—the whodunnit in particular.. . . .

PAINTING SUPPORTS, WHETHER panels or stretched canvas, now come in standard sizes, by inches in the U.S. and by centimeters in Europe. The cross-Atlantic mismatch has made it difficult to universally navigate canvas and frame sizes, yet the preferred visual proportions roughly are the same. This sameness—a kind of “golden” shape—may suggest that humans share a common preference for the proportions of a rectangle, a shape with long and short parallel sides. . . .

CONTENTMENT, RATHER THAN fame and fortune, is probably the true path to happiness. At least that is the prescription offered by the great spiritual traditions: Judaism’s adherence to the Torah, Christianity’s grace, and Buddhism’s detachment. Serious painters, however, may never be contented for three rather worldly reasons. . . .

WHY IS THE PAINTING BY Diego Velázquez, The Surrender of Breda (1635), given a double significance in the history of art? First, it shows Velázquez at his finest, outsized in dimensions (10x12 feet) and creative as well. It is considered his greatest work. Second, the painting tells of a turning point in European fortunes in the seventeenth century. . . .

AUTUMN WAS FAST receding, so it was time to go out and capture the diminishing colors. I’d painted at this local cemetery before, once as a snow scene. So I returned to scout its autumn tree line. Outdoor painting in a city can offer many distractions. For the absence of noise and spectators, however, there’s nothing like a cemetery. There’s peace and quiet, with an emphasis on peace. . . .

FEW IF ANY BOOKS ABOUT painting have been bestsellers. A handful, however, might be classed as having an impact on the world of painters, sometimes for centuries, other times in a particular period. Eight come to mind. . . .

RIPPLING CREEKS AND small flowing rivers have always been a favorite in landscape painting. Few painters worth their linseed oil, however, would title such works a “Babbling Brook.” The too-sugary words are hard to escape, nevertheless. These words came to my mind one morning as I chose to paint a winter creek, standing on a small bridge, which allowed me to avoid the muddy terrain. . . .

NOT TO BE GLOOMY, but the 2020 pandemic touches on just about everything—including the life of painters. Not a few art association meetings, show receptions, workshops, and calls for artists have been postponed, put in limbo, or cancelled. One group of 2-D artists I’m associated with has our paintings quarantined, so to speak, in the House of Delegates office building at the Maryland Statehouse in Annapolis.

WHAT IS THE FOCAL POINT?” That is the question many painters ask as they compose a painted artwork. Since this idea is widely taught in art schools, it is also the question that art critics and art contest judges ask when they look at someone’s painting. Indeed, in some schools of thought, the “focal point” is as indispensable to a painting as paint itself.

AT A PAINTING DEMO ONE DAY, I heard our exemplary painter onstage say, “We are all poets.” Sounds nice, and it was not the first time I’d heard the allusion. But is it actually true? Under the heading of clear thinking, I’m skeptical. In plain language, the poet, as we all know, writes down words that have rhythm and rhyme and tell a kind of discursive story.