Episode 13 Paint In Verbs

       

Episode 13 - Paint in Verbs

Welcome, art lovers, to another episode of the Sight & Insight Podcast. This week, Connie, David and Judy discuss what "Paint in Verbs" actually means.

The phrase comes from advice given by artist/teacher Charles Woodbury to his students, among whom we find Gertrude Fiske, whose work exemplifes the expression, 'paint in verbs,' or, to put it another way, 'poetry in motion.'

      

Above: Charles Woodbury (left) 'Playing in the Waves,' oil on canvas,  17 x 21, in., courtesy of Parco Fine Art, and (right) 'The Narrow Cove,' c.1906, oil on canvas, 29 x 36 in., Rhode Island School of Design Museum, Providence, RI.

Charles Woodbury was unique among his colleagues at the Guild of Boston Artists, and not only because he was one of the few marine artists among a coterie of landscape artists and still life painters. He was also the only member to have graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in Engineering. Perhaps this was why Woodbury was interested in the structure and make up of terrain and coastline, crest and ground swell. Woodbury's encouraged his students to express themselves truthfully in terms of genre, design and color. "Art is psychology, not science, and there must be one unknown factor, the personal equation. You must know what you see, why you see, and what is worth seeing." [Woodbury, Painting and the Personal Equation, Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co., 1919, p.95].

Sounds like good advice. Why not give it a try?

Until next week — happy painting!

Connie, David and Judy