Watercolorist Frederick Brosen’s painting process involves a bicycle. He typically starts cycling at dawn in his native New York, searching for picture-worthy deserted streets. After finding one, he sketches the scene, takes photographs, and later revises his original draft.
Read MorePhotos: Joseph Kellard
Cultivating greater enjoyment of the visual arts can profoundly change your life.
Art in general–from painting, sculpture and drawing to literature, music and movies–packs that degree of life-enhancing power. But while some people at museums can experience speechless awe when encountering a beautiful painting or sculpture, others can muster only enough enthusiasm to say: “There were some pretty pictures and nice statues.”
This is a portrait by Rembrandt of a young man whose name and background are unknown. Who is he? How might we tell by studying the portrait’s details and how Rembrandt presented them?
Read MoreAn icy-calm Merced River lined by evergreens leads the eye to the snow-covered Half Dome in Ansel Adams’ 1938 black-and-white of Yosemite’s picturesque granite formation.
Read MoreWelcome to my second published year-end review since my inaugural summary in 2014.
Read MoreA carving of a deer at Bethesda Terrace in Central Park, New York. (Photo: Joseph Kellard)
While each Thanksgiving, I typically reflect on what I’m most grateful for during that particular year, there exists an ever-present undercurrent of gratitude that runs broader and deeper.
Read MoreDo you ever ask: “What is freedom?”
Independence Day in “the land of the free” is the most appropriate day to reflect on the ideas of freedom and liberty.
Read MoreDuring a summer trip down South, I visited the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., to view for the first time Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait Ginevra de’ Benci. (Photo: Brian Jones)
“Walk straight down the hall, turn right at the third room, and her eyes will meet yours,” an employee at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C. told me when I asked her where I would find “the Leonardo da Vinci painting.”
Read MoreI reached a milestone in my research for an essay I plan to write about Leonardo da Vinci. I finished reading his treatise on painting
Read MoreI drew the picture on the left (Innsbruck, Austria) in a high school art class, after which I stopped drawing to focus on writing. Next to it is a picture of a park scene that I drew last summer, the first time I picked up a pencil to sketch anything since then.
Do you ever reflect on hobbies you once enjoyed but no longer practice?
Perhaps you passionately played a sport or musical instrument; pursued a craft such as pottery, sewing, or woodwork; engaged in intellectually challenging games; or enjoyed activities in the great outdoors.
Last summer, I started drawing for the first time in decades. Through this, I realized that reviving dormant hobbies can spark new creative endeavors and perspectives on life.
Read MoreWelcome to the wall at my (unusually clean) desk at home. Drab and boring, right? Bookshelves once hung there until the brackets gave and my books tumbled down. I left the wall bare for a year until last summer.
Read MoreAyn Rand’s birthday today seems like an appropriate day for me to kick off re-reading her books from cover to cover after many years. Actually, the timing is right for a few fundamental reasons.
Read MoreThe Marvellous Works of Nature and Man.
Photo: Joseph Kellard
The Marvellous Works of Nature and Man is the most informative book I’ve read so far on the depth of Leonardo da Vinci’s thinking as an artist, scientist and engineer.
Read MoreI now know what people mean when they say that travel can improve your life considerably.
When I was a teen, my sister told me about an Italian artist and unique polymath who lived during the Renaissance: Leonardo da Vinci. Intrigued, I began reading about this staggeringly versatile man and visionary inventor, whose copious notebooks reveal that he studied everything from architecture to geology to aeronautics. I recognized his world-famous masterpieces, the Mona Lisa and the Last Supper, from pop-art parodies, and I vowed to one day visit his homeland.
Read MoreIt’s true, a cup of well-brewed coffee and the birth of a child have something in common. Both are equally worthy candidates to include as Three Good Things.
Read MoreRecently I read Monument Man: The Life & Art of Daniel Chester French, the long-awaited first authoritative biography of my favorite sculptor, who a New York Times writer hailed, at his death in 1931, as a “distinctively American ‘apostle of beauty.’” While a review was published that closely reflects what I wanted to write about the book, I’m still eager to share some thoughts on why that writer’s description is so apt.
Read MoreA spread of books, articles and magazines on Leonardo da Vinci that I’ve read since my early fascination with the Renaissance man.
I was about 16 when I first heard his name. My sister, Mary, told me about an Italian artist she learned about from her friend’s mother who was a painter.
