BLACK PAINTERS MATTER, and especially so at the Phillips Collection art museum in Washington D.C. On permanent display there are 30 of the famous “The Migration of the Negro” series of 60 paintings, produced in 1940 by the noted black artist Jacob Lawrence. The series, in fact, gives the museum a significant hallmark. . . .

ONE COULD SPEND A LIFETIME studying “perspective.” Dating back to the ancients and the geometer Euclid, perspective has meant simply “to see.” For visual artists, the interest has been how to replicate what we see in terms of distance: how to make buildings on a street look like they are getting farther from us, or how to make mountains look close or far off. In short, it's a matter of how the biological eye works in combination with the reality of geometry, or how lines make shapes. . . .

YOU HAVE TO GET used to it. You know, the bragging by artists on the Internet about their latest award, latest jury acceptance, latest “master” title in the art guild, or latest painting—especially if they tell you they did it in just 30 minutes! A subtle hint at virtuoso-dom. . . . Bragging rights arise in all competitive professions, especially if you have paid your dues, . . .

EVERY YEAR IN BALTIMORE, someone in the dark stealth of night slinks to the graveyard where Edgar Allen Poe is buried and places three rose and glass of cognac on his grave. The tradition evokes mystery and cunning, as befits the founder of the noir detective and horror stories. Though a raconteur of terror and crime, Poe was also an art critic who loved traditional beauty, even “loveliness,” in art. . . .

PERHAPS IT BEGAN with the 1989 book, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. I speak of today’s tsunami of things pitched in numbers, as in “10 ways” to do this, or “6 ways” to achieve that. Not only book titles now, but Internet advice especially. Go to any how-to website, and there it is—a list of how to get such and such done. The art world is awash in this as well. . . .

IN WESTERN CULTURE, we always go back to the Greeks. However, we look in vain for a surviving text from the ancient Greek writers that is about a craftsman or painter. As a story-telling people, the Greeks must have had verbal tales about artists. . . . The painter, however, was not a sufficiently heroic or tragic enough figure, apparently. . . .

BACK IN THE ERA of the Paris Salon (late 1800s onward), the day before the exhibit opened, everyone varnished their paintings. Thus was born the term Verness—a special, exclusive day before the public is allowed to wander the exhibit hallways. The tradition has carried over in a variety of ways. . . .

WHAT CAN BEST-SELLING authors teach painters, that is, painters who want to become best-selling artists? Two case studies come to mind, though they are hardly exhaustive of the subject. The novelist Lee Child, of Jack Reacher stories fame, once pointed out that university English department's that award the Masters of Fine Art (MFA) teach a particular doctrine. They tell budding writers to "show not tell." In other words, make the writing visual, not explanatory. Child calls this "MFA nonsense." He says, "You don't show a child a story, you tell a child a story." . . .

LOCATION, LOCATION, LOCATION. The old real estate motto has relevance to career painters as well. Art history is replete with urban locations were artists hung out, many successfully. We also have the more modern "art colonies," typically more rural (deserts, mountains, or seaside). Some of these "art scenes" emerged naturally. Still, it took intentional efforts by artists to pull up whatever roots they had to move there. Once there was a critical mass, an art scene was built. . . .

THE PAINTER RICHARD SCHMID once said, “Painting and booze don’t mix.” Amen to that, Brother! It’s long been different with creative writers, of course. The late-great writing instructor John Gardner, author of The Art of Fiction, shared how, when creatively stuck, he’d sip vodka to revive his inventiveness. Hemingway was so far gone at the end of his career that his New York editors had to rewrite his prose. Modern painters, however, have not always been as abstemious as Schmid has counseled. . . .

BOGART AND BACAL. LAUREL and Hardy. Tom and Jerry. Lewis and Clark. And finally, Hawthorne and Hensche. Hawthorne and Hensch?” you say. In the twentieth-century American world of Impressionist painting, they are the twosome worth looking at. Charles Webster Hawthorne (1872-1930) and Henry Hensche (1899-1992) had a teacher-student relationship. Their legacy, and their particular method of painting, has been said to have established an enduring school of Impressionism in the United States, especially on the Eastern seaboard. . . .

THE HUMAN MIND, MET WITH infinite amounts of data in the world, is always demanding, "Get to the point." It wants to reduce the complex to the simple. This is what psychology and brain science have told us, and it has been applied in many areas—including a painting's composition. . . .

A NEW MOVEMENT IN COLOR mixing for painters is challenging some old orthodoxies. Naturally, it also is facing stiff headwinds. Is there really something new under the sun when it comes to mixing paint? Painters have established their pallet selections for generations. And it's not easy to turn such orthodoxies on their heads. But that's what a new approach is claiming to do. . . .

VISUAL IMAGERY—THAT IS, visual art— is well known for its ability to please. It also can provoke. And thus we have a human history of iconoclasm, literally, to smash images we don't like. And there’s been a good deal of art-smashing lately, at least with statues. The iconoclasts, from whom we derive the terms, were a twice-active movement among Eastern Orthodox purists in the Byzantine Empire of the 8th and 9th centuries. . . .

IT TOOK A WHILE for photography in the nineteenth century to be called “art,” putting it in head-to-head competition with painting. But when that moment came, the art world changed. This theme of painting v. photography has a great deal of philosophic reflection and perennial turf wars. I recall one “call for artists” for a 2-D show titled, “American Landscape.” The judge, in this particular case, chose nearly all landscape photographs, despite the great number of paintings submitted. . . .

THE PITHY SAYING HAS been around for a while, but for painters, Picasso is most quotable: "Good artists copy; great artists steal." Ever since the idea was put in circulation in the late 1800s, it has been a conundrum. What is the difference between copying and stealing? In our times, literary plagiarism is clearly an ethical crime. . . .

AT AN ANNUAL MEETING of the Portrait Society of America, I was privileged to hear a presentation by John Howard Sandon, a preeminent portrait and figure painter. What surprised me most was his final, emphatic advice: "Don't let the buyer chose the frame. You must decide on the frame!" (I paraphrase). Every painter, professional and amateur, comes up against this difficult choice. . . .

I'M NOT SURE WHO coined the contemporary slogan, "Follow Your Passion," but I have a suggestion regarding its frequent use to describe making art. Let's put a moratorium on the "passion" term for five years. Then, we can reconsider its revival. Like all terms that are used too often, passion now tends to ring hollow, even though it’s a perfectly good English word. According to Merriam-Webster, passion has twelve possible meanings . . .

AS WORD OF "REVOLUTION in America" rises on the Black Lives Matter protests in US cities, the names of two French artists, Édouard Manet and Gustave Courbet, come to mind. Both were at the peak of their artistry during the short-lived revolution of the Paris Commune in spring of 1871. Both were in the thick of the three month event—when left-leaning revolutionaries, back by a national militia, took over Paris. And both painters had roles in the outcome. . . .

PAINTING OUTDOORS IN PUBLIC places has a pleasant benefit. Passersby often stop to watch and engage in conversion. The two things most often heard are, “Oh, that’s beautiful,” and “Do you sell those?” This is music to the painter’s ears, though the painting may not in fact be going well, and these nice folks never buy anything anyway. My favorite comment, however, is, “Oh, that looks so relaxing.” I’ve heard that one often enough that, finally, I fashioned a comeback that was brief and quiet honest. “Actually, mam, it’s quite stressful.” . . .