When Did You Last Really Dream?

by | Sep 1, 2023 | Fine Arts America

As a young man, I spent all of 1974 traveling through Europe. Iceland, Ireland, England, the Netherlands, France, Hungary … all the usual and unusual suspects. During my six weeks in Ireland, I acquired a girlfriend—that was lovely. I was pulled off the night train,...

Slits in Nothingness Are Hard to Paint

by | Aug 25, 2023 | Fine Arts America

[If you’d like to meet some of your fellow travelers, please come join my new Eric Maisel Community.] In talking about certain of her desert paintings, Georgia O’Keeffe once remarked, “Slits in nothingness are not very easy to paint.” Indeed. Being on the...

What Can Community Mean to a Lone Wolf?

by | Aug 17, 2023 | Fine Arts America

What can community mean to a lone wolf? There is the story of a farmer who attended an auction where a painting of his farm was being sold. When the bidding was over and the painting had sold for a hefty price, the farmer exclaimed, “But he could have had the whole...

The Archetype of Paris

by | Aug 11, 2023 | Fine Arts America

Some books haunt me a little. Giovanni’s Room, James Baldwin’s 1956 novel about a young man in Paris, is one of those. I read it when I was very young, probably not yet a teenager, at a time when I was reading just about anything and everything, from Eric Ambler spy...