Robert Francis James

The world is divided into two classes—invalids and nurses. — James Abbott McNeill Whistler My troublesome, months-long recovery from a broken ankle would be much more vexing were it not for my wife’s ministrations. If I’m able to paint and write while being laid up, it’s all her doing. I’m an invalid. The Cobbler. James Whistler. 1855. That means I’m deadweight. Useless, demanding, disheveled, lethargic, timorous, sullen, burdensome and routinely irritable. In short, a charmer. While I loll on the sofa most of the day, my wife cooks and cleans and counts out my pills. When I set up in my studio to work, she fetches the canvases, paints, brushes, knives, solvents and paper towels; adjusts all the furniture and electronics; brings me my coffee; and later helps with the cleanup. The British painter Walter Sickert once described his teacher James Whistler as a nurse —a description a  careless writer transmogrified into an apocryphal Whistler saying . As Sickert des...

Creativity takes what it needs from the person who possesses it and discards the rest. — Peter Schjeldah l New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldah l once observed that, for viewers, subject and medium always transcend a painter’s thoughts and feelings. I think that’s why, after just a few weeks, I don’t recognize my own paintings as mine and can’t help but think the Muse must have created them. But no. Given we get the word museum from Muse , it’s ironic the Ancient Greeks didn’t have a Muse for painters. The  nine sisters instead drove performers (oracles, bards, storytellers, songwriters, musicians, dancers, actors, comedians, and mimes). Henri Martin, The Painter’s Muse And while other creatives had divine help (sculptors, for example, could count on the god Hephaestus ), painters lacked an Olympian guide. They were on their own. That lack could explain why painting is so exhausting. After three, four or five hours at the easel—the time it takes me to finish an a...

In every moment, in every thing, eternity is present. — Wols Painting trains you to find the “ungraspable abstract” in things, the eternal forms obscured by ordinary perception, and to render them as your emotions dictate. It’s both those qualities— the eternal and the emotional —that make good paintings so pleasing. Paintings are felt fragments of forever. Paintings are poignant, too, because our deaths never lie far off. Death’s prospect claims our every waking moment, crying Carpe diem! at the top of its lungs . Good paintings remind us to seize and celebrate all our days—even the cold and rainy ones. These days—reluctantly— I’m learning to paint sitting down , a wholly new experience that one painting teacher insists will soon become my preference. He well could be right. The Surrealist Wols advised painters to imitate housecats in front of the easel. “While working,” he said, “you have to imitate the cat, staying as still as the furniture around it.” Wols also advised...

We don’t make movies to make more money. We make more money to make more movies. – Walt Disney Let’s be honest: I paint to make money. But that’s the least of it. I paint better to see the world because, as Wittgenstein said, “the world is all that is the case.” My days in it are numbered; I don’t want to miss out, in the time that remains. The world still has a lot to tell me. I paint to understand painting . I’ve looked avidly at art since childhood , but didn’t really comprehend it. Since picking up a brush, I’ve discovered through practice and the guidance of great teachers that painting is almost all about geometry, value, contrast, and the fluidity of the marks you make on your canvas. I paint to add a some beauty to the world. I’ve already added 1,500 tons of carbon to the planet; I want at least a little of my byproduct to be pretty. I paint to delight collectors . Not a thousand of them; not even a hundred. Maybe twenty, thirty or forty. That would do nicely! I pai...

The job of an artist is to offer a sanctuary of beauty to an ugly world – Jeff Goins A few years ago, University of Chicago historian Tom Smith asked 27,000 Americans to evaluate their jobs. He found that, of nearly 200 occupations, painters scored fifth for overall job satisfaction. Only ministers, physical therapists, firefighters and school principals scored higher. (Roofers scored the worst.) Smith’s findings don’t surprise me. For every suffering painter, I’ve discovered, there’s a legion of contented ones. Even the discontented painters feel satisfaction in their jobs. “The only time I feel alive is when I’m painting,” V an Gogh once told his brother. As I’ve mentioned, I recently broke five bones in my left leg . The injury led me to fear for my ability to paint, because it forced me to learn to paint sitting down, something I’d never attempted. My fear was unwarranted. “I am not sick. I am broken,” Frida Kahlo once told Time . “But I am happy to be alive as long as I...

Painting is another way of keeping a diary. — Pablo Picasso I dashed off Social Distancing last March, the morning I realized Covid-19 was not just some flu, but “really real.” Since that morning ten months ago, 389,000 Americans have died of the virus , including a close family member; many because they couldn’t—or wouldn’t—social distance. Many more Americans will surely follow. Social Distancing proves Picasso was right about painting’s resemblance to journaling. When I look back on the piece, I remember clearly where, when, and why I painted it. Which brings me to my topic: remembrance .  Remembrance isn’t for everyone . It’s inconvenient and makes most people discomfited. But remembrance is monolithic, inescapable, irrefutable. “Memory believes before knowing remembers,” as Faulkner, America’s bard of things past, said. A painting like Social Distance , I realize, may cause viewers to distance themselves—from me. So be it. I don’t paint for them. I paint in ...

There are no second acts in American lives.                                                                                                                                         — F. Scott Fitzgerald Second acts fascinate me. So it’s pleasing to learn my own encore has been featured in Carl Landau’s Pickelball Media . Thanks, Carl. And sorry, Scott. You were wrong. Above: Tangerines. Oil on canvas. 16 x 12 inches. Sold. The post My Second Act appeared first on Original still life oil paintings for sale l Robert Francis James .

Others have no data for computing our orbit other than our past acts. — Ralph Waldo Emerson Twenty years ago, a business coach recommended I read the now out-of-print Nichecraft . The book convinced me to specialize —a lesson I’ve carried with me into my move into professional painting. Specializing repels creatives, most especially scanners ; it is to them, in Emerson’s famous phrase , “the hobgoblin of little minds.” But, as if confirmation were needed,  the sales I made last year confirmed that I need to specialize . So in 2021, I will make it my habit to paint small floral oil paintings . I hope in fact to make it my trademark. There’s a madness to my method. Fifty years ago—in 1968, to be exact—my parents shelled out a small fortune so I could take a barrage of professional aptitude tests. It was the first time I encountered a computerized questionnaire—new in the 1960s. I filled in 300 circles with a soft Number 2 pencil, then waited two weeks to learn from the social ...