The Seven Secrets of Art (and a few more...)

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Philip Koch, The Roof, oil on canvas, 
20 x 14 inches, Somerville Manning Gallery,
Greenville, DE


Edward Hopper and Charles Burchfield are two painters who have exerted enormous helpful influence on my work. Hopper wrote almost nothing about art. Burchfield filled literally thousands of pages with his observations on painting. 

I guess I fall kind of in between those two. 

I am shortly going to be leaving teaching my final course at MICA and moving to being a full time painter, an exciting prospect. Below is a list of ideas I'm going to be giving my art students tomorrow. They're general advice distilled down to just bullet points. Some of them may just provoke more questions. But maybe that's the idea.

The 7 Secrets of Art (and a few more...).                                       


        #1.  That there are secrets and mystery in art.
           
#2.  Art is a language with its own grammar. There are in fact 
        rules- some to be followed, some to be broken.

        #3.  Tone is often more important than color.
           
#4.  Shapes are almost always more important than color.
           
#5   Silhouettes are more important than details
           
#6.  Intervals of empty space can be more important than  
       solid forms.
           
#7.  Craftsmanship is always in style.
          
#8. The problem with ones work is usually next to where you 
       think it is.    
           
          #9.  Art is not an idea but a vision.
           
#10.  Art is the marriage of the skeptic and the hopeless 
          romantic.
           
#11.  Art revisits the joys and terrors of childhood.
           
#12.  Thought we all have genuinely contemporary 
          experiences and emotions,  an artist has to carry 
          forward some of the threads that were woven by 
          the past great masters.
          
           #13. While creating art is usually solitary, an artist needs      
                    feedback from someone they trust who has a good 
                    eye.
           
#14.  The art world is filled with all sorts of different people.  
         You will meet examples of each of these:

                        genuine
                        insightful
                        exciting
                        confused
                        pretentious
                        downright silly
           
#15   Keep your eyes open, your heart warm, and stick to your
         guns.
            

My easel as I worked on an oil in East Aurora,
NY while I was the Artist in Residence at the
Burchfield Penney Art Center in nearby
Buffalo.

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