Skip to main content

Back to Painting

I am back to painting now after several months of packing, moving, unpacking, churching, ministering, etc. It is nice to feel the brush in my hand again. There's no suitable place to paint in oils here at my new home so I am working solely in watercolor and egg tempera. I found some good egg tempera sites, by the way, here, and here. It is a great medium because of the subtlety of and quality of the brush stroke you can get, and because it works with the ease of watercolor, but has the permanence and versatility of oil painting. I have been doing some landscapes, and will soon go back to painting buildings, I guess.

That reminds me of a funny story. A lady who came by and did a TV news story on the church recently, when she found out that I paint said, "Oh, so do I. I am taking art classes in college. But I can't paint in oils because whatever you paint is there forever. I am not good enough to paint in oils because there is no room for error." A lot of people have told me that over the years actually. But the moment I hear that I know that they know nothing about painting at all, because oils are the most forgiving media of all (uh, ever hear of layers of paintings being done on a single canvas?). Oils can be layered on top of each other to no end, whereas watercolor cannot. watercolor is the unforgiving medium.

Comments

KayKay said…
You sound like a snobby artist! Very amusing.

I am in mourning. You gave me a painting of a pumpkin/gourd several years ago, and with my two moves in the last couple of years it's come up missing. I've searched and searched, and I can't find it anywhere! I loved that simple little painting! We do have a very small framed piece of yours hanging downstairs. I'm still waiting for my Civil War painting with lots of BLOOD!
With lots of BLOOOOOOOOD!! You're a nut. You have to go to that crazy lady at the plantation to get that!

Popular posts from this blog

A Tale of Two Cathedrals

My wife and I just returned from vacation. While away, we got to visit the Basilica of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary in Baltimore, which had recently undergone a huge renovation. The last time I was there was to see the famous "Timla Relic" a few years ago. Unlike some horrific church renovations that have gone on in recent years that were supposedly meant to "update" the church, this restoration was meant to "return" the interior of the building to its original Federal-period design. And I must say that it a very tasteful renovation. They did a really good job. It looks almost like an old early Episcopal church - white washed interior, minimal designs, etc. The interior is now very bright because they removed the stained glass (dark blue Willet windows), and uncovered the original skylights in the dome. They kept all of the good stuff (the high altar, altar rails, etc.), and brought some cool old stuff back (e.g. the nation's first RC epi...

Priest, Psychologist, and Art Critic

The other night on EWTN, Fr. Benedict Groeschel proudly proclaimed that he had never stepped foot in the MoMA , because he couldn't stand looking at all of the ugliness and disorderliness of "modern art". Apparently while he was doing his doctorate in psychology he took some courses in art history and art criticism. I couldn't disagree more with what he said. There is definite order in modern art - it might just not be readily apparent with some artists. Certainly the early work of people like Frank Stella, Leger, and many others, is very rigid and ordered. There is even order in Jackson Pollock paintings as Francis Schaffer showed in How Shall We Then Live . And besides that MoMA has many other paintings in it that are done in a more traditional style that he would probably enjoy. For example, I believe now there is a show of Lucian Freud prints and Seurat drawings. So I don't know what father was talking about in that interview. It really makes no sense to me.