Robert Francis James

Art—and the outdoors—are calling! Look for my outdoor exhibit at Art Fest at Whitehall , Sunday, April 25, noon-4 pm. It’s your chance to save sales tax and shipping on every one of my paintings. The festival features live music, fun food, and exhibits by more than 100 regional artists. Admission is free. Art Fest at Whitehall takes place in Middletown, Delaware. Learn more here . Can’t make it? No worries. I am also exhibiting at the Center for the Creative Arts’ 2021 1st Annual Spring Exhibition , April 15 – May 15, in Yorklyn, Delaware. Learn more here . The post Out and About appeared first on Original still life oil paintings for sale l Robert Francis James .

If there is a higher being it is an unconscious one. A tree never worries about the house it blocks from view. — Ken Kewley Artist Ken Kewley has remarkable insight into colors . “Pure colors are rare,” he says. “Look at great paintings. Look for primary colors, colors that can be easily named, i.e., green, orange, etc. Usually they are not found. Most colors are without names. “Most colors are adjusted and fine tuned—colors found by a need to compose the whole, each color playing a role. Color changes depending on the size of the form and its neighbors. Whatever the subject, the shapes and colors that make up this subject also make up an abstract design—a composition.” A skilled artist chooses colors like a playwright chooses characters, Kewley says, adjusting each color to play a specific role. Some colors play leading roles, some supporting. Some are protagonists, some antagonists. Landscape III by Ken Kewley The “play” that results is a composition, a “balance of un...

The work of art provides us with new organs with which to see the world. — Maurice Merleau-Ponty We understand the world thanks to nonfungible mental tokens we call “ideas.” Ideas bridge internal and external reality and allow us to say, “Yes, I get it, I understand.” But—unless we’re Buddhists, philosophers or neuroscientists—we don’t distinguish the outer from the inner world, nor from the ideas that swirl in our brains. There’s only the world . Our on-ramps to the world are the five sense; more accurately, the five sense organs of sight, sound, touch, taste, and smell. The sense organs are handy ( organ in fact derives from the Greek organon , meaning “tool”).  Imagine getting along without them! But, if you think about it, our organs curtail understanding. None lets us, for example, detect a flower by its voltage (a b umblebee can do this); or a blood-vein by its temperature (a bat can do this); or a compass-direction by the Earth’s magnetic field (a worm can do thi...

Andy Warhol looks a scream, hang him on my wall. Andy Warhol, silver screen, can’t tell them apart at all. — David Bowie An appeals court has ruled Andy Warhol violated a photographer’s copyright 40 years ago, according to The New York Times . He borrowed her photo without permission to make a silk-screen. Overturning an earlier decision that the Pop Artist’s reliance on the 1981 photo was “fair use” of the image, the court ruled that Warhol’s “appropriation” of Lynn Goldsmith’s photo of Prince constituted copyright infringement. For artists, the decision sets a terrible precedent. “Fair use” should allow an artist to borrow an image, without permission or payment, for purposes of self-expression; but the new court ruling insists an artist cannot do so. I paint from life , but know many artists who paint every day from photos they’ve grabbed off the web. Thanks to the court’s decision, they’re now liable for piracy. Orange Prince. Before the court’s ruling, copyright...