Anne Molasky was among the St. Louis-area painters highlighted at the recent national juried RepreSENSATATIONAL show. Her featured work, Goddess in the Making, is part of her evolving Goddess Within series of large-scale portraits that explore feminine strength and empowerment within a natural setting.

Making mistakes as artists is something we are all very familiar with. How we handle mistakes makes a huge difference in our growth as an artist, as well as the outcome of the painting.

The temperature was in the upper 90s when Judy Stroup set out to paint the willow tree and surrounding grasses near the riverbank at Cliff Cave Park. The park’s main shelter provided just enough relief to make painting bearable. Then came the gift of breeze.

I have a lot of reference photos. I mean a lot of photos! There are well over 75,000 photos on my hard drive. Many of the photos have been collected from vacations, gardens, wildlife sanctuaries, zoos, historical locales, and plein air opportunities. One particular photo that I kept revisiting was from a trip to Texas in 2011.

I am figurative oil painter, who is not driven by a particular subject or object. My interest is in the process with the final image evolving from that process. When selecting a subject, I look for the overall visual stimulation to provide me with the vehicle for a new and interesting creative experience. I view the entire painting process as abstract, leaving the subject to take a back seat to the process.

Here are five tips from Farley Lewis for artists beginning their professional careers!

Steve Morris has entered dozens of shows over the years and knows what it’s like to have work rejected and accepted. He’s learned a number of things that may be helpful to you when deciding if you should enter your work.

Heartland Art Club is having an exciting 2023, hosting four exhibitions and many workshops and classes in a range of media!

The gallery at Heartland Art Club was brimming with anticipation and energy this month as more than 100 attendees joined in the kickoff of the annual Member’s Showcase. The juried exhibition, representing the talent of 58 member-artists, depicts an array of content and media. The Showcase runs July 7-August 23.

Think back for a moment. Think back to that very first piece of original art that you purchased with your own money.

Learning how to simplify is always the most important and challenging part of starting portraits. That means composing the portrait with general forms instead of particular features.

The sunset is brilliant! The colors are spectacular! The sky is filled with the dance of so many colors. You quickly snap some photos to capture the moment, thinking to yourself about how you are going to create a painting to memorialize this moment. But when you look at the photo, you realize this is not how it looked. The colors are all wrong. And where are all the nuances that made this moment beg to be painted?

Heartland Art Club and Michael McClure are joining together for a very special offering to artists! You won’t want to miss this unique opportunity to paint in a beautiful setting in the Ozarks and work with nationally ranked artists as mentors.

I was introduced to Watercolor by a wonderful, patient teacher, Marty Spears. She was giving classes in her basement, and I jumped at the chance to experiment with this most amazing medium. I was immediately captivated by the water and pigment running across the paper, not really caring what I was doing, but enjoying every minute.

Humans have been crafting art and useful objects from nature for centuries, but in today’s mechanized world we have been losing touch with grown and found things. My artwork has found a contemporary way to tell stories with these materials.

Admit it. We’ve all done it. We painted that dramatic sunset sky, capturing all its glory. And silhouetted against the sky was a tree.

I feel that the artists’ journey is one of exploring who they are and finding the best way to express their unique vision.

Halation is the spreading of light beyond its proper boundaries to form a fog around the edges of a bright image (Source:  Oxford Languages Dictionary).   It is a term commonly used in photography.  But it is a term and a practice with which, as artists, we need to be familiar.