The Nature of All Things

Perspectives from The Artist's Road

Detail from Transcendence Oil © John Hulsey

Change. It’s the nature of all things, yet there is also a natural human inclination to avoid it whenever possible—perhaps because it can be uncomfortable—even painful. But change is what propels our art forward and to deny it in our work can doom us to repeating what we have already done. We learn through failure, more often than not. We try to practice that sound principle and to teach it to our students. Once we get comfortable with failure as our constant companion, we become free to explore wherever we like.

Last year, I began to seriously practice what I preach and took up a new way of painting. I decided that I needed a less precise set of tools with which to experiment in my oil painting. I had gotten to the place where I could realistically render in detail and I was wanting to go deeper beyond the appearance of things. The world I could see and sense in my walks through the woods was more complex and inter…