For thousands of years we have cultured symbols for picturing flora. We still borrow the same stem imagery, the same schema for our fabrics, dining plates, wall coverings and quick sketches. We can trace how these models of flora are … Continued

We have varieties of tools to begin abstracting a forest, a city street, a stream, a still-life, a nude.  Tools like brayers or squeegees can pry us away from dogmatic representation.  Photo software can provide freedom to improvise with images … Continued

Organizing chaotic territory is a joy of art.  Arranging notes into a pattern packed with surprises sustains the attention of the artist as well as the audience.  Finding a visual field which threatens to dissolve into chaos offers a delicious … Continued

Early in the 19th Century English artists like Turner, Bonington and Constable focused on the shore, its vicissitudes of weather, its reflective sunlight, its human drama.  By the late 19th century Americans like Winslow Homer had simplified their designs to … Continued

Hints require guessing. Guessing is a game and purpose of art. In painting we forever try to find something, some mental anchorage. In the late 19th century we learned to make the guessing the central theme of painting.   The artist … Continued

Using delicate and dense micromosaics (example 1) Ancient Roman mosaic artisans mastered resemblance to paintings at distance of just a few feet.  At larger scales mosaics were a model for stained glass windows with their arrangement of fracture lines carefully … Continued