Artists Magazine March/April 2022

“A picture is first of all a product of the imagination of the artist; it must never be a copy.” EDGAR DEGAS THE POWER OF THE IMAGINATION For many, the expectation for artwork that’s said to be based on an artist’s “imagination” is a piece of art that’s either wholly abstract or that depicts strange, dreamlike imagery, but all artists—no matter the subject or style they favor—rely on the imagination. In fact, you can’t begin to make art if you can’t first imagine how to bring a three-dimensional subject to life on a two-dimensional surface or carve it from a mound of clay or stone. Any time an artist is depicting a subject that’s not present for observation (the Pilgrims, for example) or that has never been perceived in real…

artists and other seekers often refer to the arc of their work as their “journey.” When writing of painters, art historians trace such journeys from painting to painting, chronologically marking growth as a linear progression punctuated by internal and external forces of change. Extended months of self-isolation due to the pandemic plus the societal unrest of the last year were surely such catalysts for change. As was true for many others, the cancellations of shows, travel, classes and conventions altered the infrastructure that supported much of my creative life. Positive and negative emotions waxed and waned; however, during one period of creative energy in the summer of 2020, I found not only great solace in my studio practice but also a deeper understanding of my personal aesthetic. The progression was…

my awareness and appreciation of clouds began years ago when I moved from New England to California. In New England people say, “If you don’t like the weather, wait five minutes; it will change.” Hardly a day goes by there without a dynamic and dramatic display of cloud activity. Coastal California isn’t without dramatic weather, but it tends to be concentrated in the winter months. The rest of the year offers long spells of clear blue skies or days on end of flat gray skies, due to coastal fog. Absence only made my heart grow fonder, so the cloud formations I observed during my travels became all the more cherished. My life as an artist grew from my work as an architect, for which the drawing of buildings is stock-in-trade.…

July 2020 was the first time since the beginning of the pandemic that I took to the air to cross the country. The notion of sitting in a too-small seat gazing out a tiny porthole at the world below seemed a great novelty and release from captivity. I passed the time by sketching what I saw (see Airliner Sketch, below). On that summer day, the country was blanketed with thunderclouds, and their backlit forms from above were spectacular. The next day, in the comfort and convenience of my studio, I was able to decant the experience of the clouds from my sketches and photographs. Wanting to awaken the dormant studio and my own equally dormant facilities, I set for myself another fast exercise: capturing the amazing forms of the previous…

“The Brandywine River Museum of Art, in Chadds Ford, Pa. The gallery of work by Andrew Wyeth is of particular interest to me. While the artist’s work has been widely collected by museums around the world, it’s rarely shown as a large collection. The Brandywine is the place to go to immerse oneself in the work of one of America’s foremost painters of the 20th century. MARIO ROBINSON ARTIST “Designed to echo its desert environment, the Georgia O’Keeffe Museum, in Santa Fe, N.M., is a favorite single-artist museum. Opened in 1997, in the area where the artist lived and worked, its plain white walls provide the perfect backdrop for O’Keeffe’s bold abstractions.” JAYNE YANTZ INSTRUCTOR OF ART HISTORY, PENNSYLVANIA ACADEMY OF THE FINE ARTS “I love the Morgan Museum, in…

“Visiting The Frick Collection in New York was a magical day for me. I loved seeing Vermeer up close.” —KATE FOWLER “The Salvador Dali Museum in St. Petersburg, Florida.” —ALI K PAPA “Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design. It’s organized in such a way that you can see one culture’s influence on another’s. ” —LINN RICHARDSON “The Rothko Chapel, in Houston, is a peaceful, inspirational space for reflection. I’d visit it daily if I lived there.” —ESTON W. MCGEE…