2025 in Oil Paint

Four years after I first picked up a paint brush, I still don’t consider myself to be a real artist. Part of that is that I live with an actual fine artist, but the larger part is because I am a novelist and a photographer. Though I enjoy painting, it is a distant third for…

Are Design Rules Valid?

The short answer is it depends. If, by valid, we mean always and universally true, then no. By this standard, all design rules are nonsense. The Rule of Thirds is an arbitrary line for amateurs to gaze upon while secretly learning to shift your brain’s natural tendency to center things and create symmetry. A rule…

Combinations: George Benson & Rick Beato

Let’s listen to a song, watch it expand, and then understand what the artist is doing. Here’s George Benson’s version of Donny Hathaway’s “The Ghetto,” with Joe Sample on piano. Now, here is musician and teacher Rick Beato breaking down George’s work, because if we don’t know how artistry works, we devolve into believing it’s…

Combinations: “Louie, Louie”

Music fans from the 1960s are familiar with The Kingsmen’s ballad, “Louie, Louie,” which became a surprise hit upon its release in 1963. But how many know that it was a remake? The original, performed by its composer, Richard Berry, was recorded in 1956 and released in 1957. Poor sound engineering by The Kingsmen’s studio…

Applying New Definitions to Art Styles

Visual Arts, and especially painting, suffer from the same dilemma that confronts writers of fiction: that is, a lack of specificity and clarity in defining its genres. When discussing painting, it is more common to think in terms of styles than genres, so we will call them that here. While fiction has dealt with the…

My Favorite Things

I fell in love with the song “My Favorite Things” in 1993, the year my daughter was born, after buying Al Jarreau’s live-in-studio recording. He performed the song with operatic soloist, Kathleen Battle, and the combination, made in one take, felt flawless. I could immediately conceive of any number of interpretations of the song, it…