Every Friday morning I teach a community college painting class of about 25 students. The classroom is quite full, and the beginning students paint on folding easels set on heavy formica topped tables, while a handful of advanced...

While growing up on an Oakland hillside, artist David Tomb -- his last name is pronounced "Tom" as in "Tom Sawyer" -- was interested in both art and birds. "I'm not sure which interest came first," he muses. The home where Tomb grew up was filled with landscape paintings...

I recently interviewed Sonia Mak, an independent curator, and founding curator at the Chinese American Museum, about the exhibition 'Round the Clock: Chinese American Artists Working in Los Angeles. The exhibition, which will present the work of five contemporary Chinese American artists -- George Chann, John Kwok, Jake Lee,...

My favorite statement about how artists use intuition comes from Pablo Picasso. I have looked everywhere to try and find the precise quote, and can't, but it went something like this...

Picasso told a friend that intuition was like having a carrier pigeon with a message land on your balcony....

During my morning jog last week I was hit by an idea: I would ask all the painters I knew to send me an image of something they had painted this year and post a "10 Great Paintings from 2011" blog and slideshow. After my email box began to overflow,...

After artist Kyle Staver lost her older brother six years ago, she was moved to honor and memorialize him in the language that suits her best: the language of painting. The resulting trio of canvasses, a Biker Triptych now on view at the Pennsylvania College of Art...

David Prifti, who died on November 21st after a 2 1/2 year struggle with pancreatic cancer, was a photographer and teacher who for the past 15 years embraced the earliest techniques of photography. Using the traditional wet plate collodion process, which was developed in the 1850's, David made...

"Well, crazy wisdom--that's a very good question--is when you have a complete exchange with the road, so that the shape of the road becomes your pattern as well. There's no hesitation at all."

-Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche

It has been almost exactly thirteen years since Eric Orr,...

If you were to tell the New Zealand born artist Matthew Couper that he is living in the wrong era -- and possibly the wrong city -- he would just smile. He is more than comfortable being anachronistic.

Couper, who specializes in making contemporary paintings that have...

Los Angeles based artist Marc Trujillo, whose first solo show at Hirshl and Adler opens on November 3, paints what he calls the "shared spaces of the everyday." He is attracted to "non-destinations," familiar places where vast expanses of concrete or linoleum numb the senses. "I'm captivated by...

It must be exhilarating to be F. Scott Hess. The works that comprise his Los Angeles exhibition In Transit demonstrate that Hess has reached the point where his brush can take him just about anywhere he wants to go. The varied subjects, and hybrid realities of Hess' recent paintings make...

In the Fall of 1981 I was an incoming graduate student in Painting at UC Berkeley, anxious to meet my new professors including the respected Bay Area Figurative artists Elmer Bischoff and Joan Brown. Because I was so intent on getting Brown's opinion of my work I scheduled an individual...

Pablo Picasso once told art historian Roland Penrose that Cubism was "full of deception" so that it would keep people looking and guessing and looking again. Apparently his tricks worked -- Cubism is more than 100 years old and we are still confounded -- but at the Santa Barbara Museum...

"To contemplate is to look at shadows." -- Victor Hugo

In mid-August I published a blog on Huffington Post titled "When Appreciating Works of Art, Being There Is Always Best." Composing that blog, and coming across the writings of the aesthetic theorist John Dewey, turned out to be...

"The House That Sam Built," an exhibition now on view at the Boone Gallery of the Huntington Library, Art Collections and Botanical Gardens in San Marino isn't really about a house, and it isn't entirely about the late woodworker of genius Sam Maloof. "Its a show about community,"...

Artist Lucinda Luvaas likes the energy of big cities, especially of New York City, where she grew up and was educated. "There are many ghosts in the streets," she muses, "all those experiences that informed who I am and what made me. The place for me is pregnant...

"Humanity is not something man simply has. He must fight for it anew in every generation, and he may lose his fight." - Paul Tillich

The last time that San Francisco's John Berggruen Gallery opened a Nathan Oliveira exhibition it seemed like the world was about to come to...

"... Works of art are the most intimate and energetic means of aiding individuals to share in the arts of living." -- John Dewey

Yesterday, while clicking around on the Huffington Post Arts page, I came across David Galenson's blog "The Genius of Damien Hirst." Because I have my...

The single most beautiful and moving abstract expressionist painting I have ever seen is "Basel Mural I" by Sam Francis. I know, that is quite a strong statement, but I'll stand by it until I come across a painting I like better. I doubt that will happen anytime soon.

Painted...

When I married my first wife in 1992 she brought 3 children to the marriage. I brought a 35 mm Canon SLR and a Sony camcorder. When our marriage ended suddenly in 2002 I walked away with half a dozen albums of family photos and a plastic shoebox full of...