Making Your Mark

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

“Every artist dips his brush in his own soul, and paints his own nature into his pictures”.

- Henry Ward Beecher

Detail of Sorolla Painting, Vision of Spain

It is true that we must each find our own voice in our art, and that a part of that journey of finding our unique expression is in learning the craft of making art. When we first started painting, the impulse was to get right into the paint and see what might happen. No craft, no plan, no technique—and to be honest, we didn’t care. We both loved painting and drawing and most of all, we loved big canvasses full of color. The results were not important—just the activity. It was a time to explore freely what paint could do unhampered by any formal methods or limitations.

Eventually, though, we found that we could benefit from some training in the craft of pushing paint around. It doesn’t matter if it is abstract, impressionistic, graphic, traditional or other, it is just extremely …