Fear of making mistakes and controlling the drawing/painting process are factors underlying the part-to-part response of most beginning art students. They look at individual parts of the subject Continue Reading →
Process/Practice
“If only Heaven will give me just another ten years... Just another five more years, then I could become a real painter." --Hokusai Artists, like other professional doctors, lawyers, carpenters, Continue Reading →
Alert Disinterest
“The caterpillar sheds his skin to find a butterfly within Caterpillar sheds his skin to find a butterfly within First there is a mountain, then there is no mountain, then there is First there is a Continue Reading →
Beginners Mind
When you start a long journey, trees are trees, water is water, and mountains are mountains. After you have gone some distance, trees are no longer trees, water no longer water, and mountains no Continue Reading →
Object-Directed vs. Ground-Directed
Roy Lichtenstein talked about ground-directed seeing in his first interview, in an ART News article titled, “What is Pop Art,” in 1963. The interviewer, G.R. Swenson, was more interested in the Continue Reading →
GESTALT
It takes Two to Know One. --Gregory Bateson. The pioneering Gestalt psychologists, Wolfgang Köhler, Kurt Koffka, and Max Wertheimer, in their study of human and animal perception, concluded that Continue Reading →
THINK AHEAD
One afternoon I noticed a gray metal garage door with the letters, NO PARIKG, painted in bold, red, block letters, across its surface. The red block letters appeared clearly except for the last half Continue Reading →
Part-Whole
The Gestalt psychologist, Kurt Koffka, did NOT say, “The whole is greater than the sum of the parts.” What he did say was, “The whole is different from the sum of the parts.” Making a lot of good Continue Reading →