How training can produce increasingly impressive performance while producing progressively less of the learning it was designed to create. (Written for Smartermarx Magazine Sept. 2026) A Sad Tale of Tails In 1902, French colonial authorities in Hanoi (capital city of Vietnam) faced a substantial rat problem. The issue became particularly concerning amid Hanoi’s modernization efforts,… Continue reading
In June 2022, I wrote a short article examining some of the claims surrounding zinc oxide in oil paint systems. The article grew out of several online “debates” about whether zinc oxide belonged in so many popular paint formulations, and whether artists were taking the associated risks seriously enough. After that, the issue largely receded… Continue reading
As students graduate and new students enter the studio, I find my mind doing a kind of metaphorical “lazy loading,” quietly preparing answers to the recurring questions that tend to surface in the first few months. One of those questions concerns the illumination “home” position we use for the form box and isolated form studies:… Continue reading
Navigating the landscape of learning, where multiple routes can deepen rather than dilute understanding. A Clearing In the foyer of the ÀNI Art Academies Waichulis, there is a poster that I am quite fond of, titled “Navigating the Learning Process.” It illustrates mechanisms of learning within two broad categories: those often associated with rote learning… Continue reading
It is not uncommon today to find critique practices that proceed as though evaluation can meaningfully precede criteria. A work is shown, reactions are offered, preferences are circulated, and the resulting exchange is treated as though it were pedagogically informative. Yet much of what passes for critique (in its common open-ended form) is better understood… Continue reading
Why “Medium” Is So Often Confusing Few terms in painting are used with greater broad-stroke ambiguity than “medium“. In common art-related conversations, some may use the word to refer to the binder in a paint system, a liquid additive mixed into a paint system, a solvent-rich thinning mixture, or even the entire material category in… Continue reading
How Cognitive Load and Deliberate Practice Shape Expertise Very often in conversations about technical skill in representational painting, people are quick to cite how many years they’ve been painting, as if the time invested in an activity were a reliable indicator of expertise and performance level. This reflexive appeal to “years of experience” reflects a… Continue reading
RYB and the Question of Pedagogical Validity It’s been a while since I’ve publicly addressed the utility of the RYB (red–yellow–blue) color model. A recent conversation on social media, however, prompted me to revisit the issue, not only for its utility as a powerful heuristic in early education, but also as a valuable tool for… Continue reading
Featured Image: Satire on Art Criticism Rembrandt (Rembrandt van Rijn) Dutch, 1644 “The most prized attribute of contemporary art is no longer beauty, but authenticity.”— Sarah Thornton, Seven Days in the Art World (2008) “Authenticity has become the contemporary version of the soul.”— Andrew Potter, The Authenticity Hoax (2010) In the art world, “authenticity” is… Continue reading
The following is based on the presentation given at the 2025 IX Arts convention. Humans form an initial visual interpretation almost immediately upon seeing an image. The “gist” of a scene can be extracted in under 100 milliseconds, with above-chance identification possible in as little as 13 milliseconds (about 1/75th of a second). By approximately… Continue reading