Walk the Arts' Blog
Living Through the Arts
“Re-situating” myself
Alone in your studio, guided by your intuition, stop, sit down, with your notes in hand, your mindmap on the wall, to gather a feel for the next avenues. I suggest you take a few days to write down a first draft of an artistic statement. It will put some order into your thoughts so as to better clarify them. Be warned, however, that this will not be your final statement, as others will follow.
Set parameters: no more than 500 words, write a seductive title, an incipit (very first line) that hooks; write in the active form. Watch out for repetition and tautology! The more honest you are with yourself, the easier it will be to write this text. The more you hesitate to let go with your art, the harder it will be.
Gray a Philosophical “Color”
“Over the past 40 years, I’ve seen students in the process of transitioning from saturated colors to grayed ones, a sign of serious questioning about painting. As a beginner, we shy away from mixing colors, and the more we progress in our creative practice, the more daring we become. That’s life! When we’re children, we only see saturated colors, and as we get older, gray takes over. Adults realize that gray is everywhere. “The color of truth is gray” wrote the French author André Gide.”
We can face Artificial Intelligence
How many times were we tempted to fall into the trap of mainly teaching painting techniques now all available on the Net? Just type “How to paint an Italian Landscape” and … two million plus videos jump onto your computer screen.
A First History of NFTs
“I think the reason […] I’ve chosen the career that I have is because artists are always the seers or the truth tellers. They show us the way forward”. Nora Burnett Abrams, The Story of NFTs, Artists, Technology, and Democracy. P. 53
The World of NFTs!
I had to know if NFT art is and will be a fad or not. In Canada’s national capital (Ottawa) art world, I kept hearing that it is not going to last, it’s all smoke and mirrors, ya-ya-ya, etc. So, I entered the Palazzo Strozzi with an open mind. I saw the works, I read everything on the walls, and I came out of the exhibition thinking “It is here to stay.” From that moment, on la Via de’ Tomabuoni, I felt compelled as an art historian and art educator to embrace this new reality. Didn’t we do it for Pop Art and Conceptual Art in the late ’50s and ‘60s?
My painting workshop in Tuscany
Already a month since my return from a fun-filled art-learning experience in Tuscany, Italy! The workshop went far beyond what I even imagined, or hoped it would be. The roughly eight hours per day for most days of art instruction gave me a new perspective on my art: where I was and where I wanted to be, the past and the future. But, together as a group, we were living in the present.
An Art Retreat Like No Other
If there was a little bundle of energy in our Atelier Provence group, Hyacinth (from Dayton, Ohio) was certainly. Kind, talented, persistent, with a yearning to learn, she even spent a whole night painting… below, is a “quick” appreciation of her painting workshop in...
“Perseverance” is the key to all successful artists
Perseverance is the key to all successful artists.
I always ask my painting students to memorize … “Until then, we will not rest or falter. Hand in hand with others thirsting for a better life, no matter how long it takes, regardless of support or persecution, we will joyfully respond to a savage need for liberation”.
Studio Italia, a painting vacation with…
If our art workshops focused mostly on painting techniques, then why traveling to Italy and spending money when you could stay at home and learn everything you need through the Internet for free?
Art and Neurosciences
When a subject becomes familiar, the brain activity shuts down like when viewing a lovely chickadee painting…
Can we talk about the neuroscience of art? This is the question that French neurobiologist Jean-Pierre Changeux addresses in his beautiful book The Beauty in the Brain or La Beauté dans le Cerveau (Odile Jacob, 2016). Prof. Changeux describes how the human brain behaves when making or contemplating a work of art. To make a long story short, he argues that the neural bases of aesthetic pleasure are the product of the link between cognitive and emotional brain functions, in other words, the harmony between reason and emotion. Moreover, he gives some tips on how artists can maximize the impact of their works on their audience.
Evolving in art is just a matter of faith; only believe!
We refrain from teaching painting techniques easily found on the Net. We prefer taking the necessary time (36 hours) to fully involve the participant in reflecting on her or his art — including all levels, all media […]
Rest assured that having attended one of our online classes, you will be more confident in taming the landscape in your own way while on a plein-air painting workshop.
Let Go! The Artist’s Way of Cooking
Notice: Trying to access array offset on value of type bool in /home/walkth14/public_html/wp-content/plugins/rating-widget/rating-widget.php on line 3880
Ten years ago, here in Tuscany, we decided to write a recipe book but with so many good cookbooks in the market, we needed to propose a new idea. We had to find a modus operandi close to who we are and what we do as visual artists. The answer was in front of us and painting gave it to us: art and color!
Travelling with meaning : a painting workshop in Italy
More and more travellers from the developed world are looking for meaningful travels. We are aiming for journeys that allow us to learn something new, to deepen our culture, to enhance our lives. Purpose, inspiration and self-discovery are now vital elements in our traveling choices. Probably, this is why our quality painting workshops offered since 1997, have become more and more popular.
What is “metaphysics”?
Since the advent of History, there has always been metaphysics: the Greek, the medieval, the rational, the modern. Each of these metaphysics answers to the other. The metaphysics of Plotinus responds to that of the Stoics, as that of Spinoza responds to that of Descartes, etc. (p. 80). Metaphysics is a deep reflection on things.
I return to visual art, especially to the matter of the intelligible aspect of painting: doesn’t Monet’s thought meet that of Turner, Picasso’s to Cézanne? Doesn’t Monet’s thought respond to Turner’s, Picasso’s to Cézanne’s? Shouldn’t we feed our own work of art from a greater one, which has withstood the test of time? Would metaphysics be evolutive? Would my current work necessarily prevail over the one of yesteryear?
Are We Jugglers of Life?
I am currently in Colombia on a beach, far away from the crowds because of the pandemic. And every year that I am on that beach, Picasso’s painting Les pauvres au bord de la mer (title in French) comes to my mind. More than a century passed by, and we still witness the same inequities. I keep thinking about them, the reason I wrote, during the pandemic, a novella on our society today’s conditions of which I am sharing this dialogue.
Who are we?
Since 1997 Walk the Arts (icscis inc.) has been offering top quality painting workshops, art classes, and art history tours in Italy, France, Colombia, Spain, and the United States.
© 2021 Walk the Arts
Walk the Arts
Subscribe to our blog
Get our book The Artist’s Way of Cooking
Online classes
Our Main Workshops
Studio Italia (Tuscany, Italy)
Atelier Provence (France)
Colombia ART & EAT (Caribbean)
Call Us
(800) 611-4789 (EST from North America)
(819) 457-1892 (from the World)
