Author: Anthony Waichulis

It’s 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 not as rigorous educational critique than as taste-reporting: a record of what particular viewers happen to like, dislike, prefer, or associate with. I would absolutely argue that such exercises indeed have social value and, in some contexts, even commercial value, but their instructional value is often…

Piero della Francesca’s The Resurrection serves as a profound lesson in reverence, restraint, and human dignity. Respect extends beyond manners, agreement, or civility. At its core, respect involves recognizing value beyond oneself: the worth of human life, the inheritance of culture, and the obligation to pause before destroying what cannot be replaced. The history of Piero della Francesca’s The Resurrection exemplifies this concept with particular power. Painted in the 1460s in Sansepolcro, Tuscany, The Resurrection was commissioned for the Palazzo della Residenza, the town’s communal meeting hall. Piero, a native of Sansepolcro and a prominent figure of the Italian Renaissance,…

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 which an artwork is made. An artist may say “oil is the medium,” “add some medium,” or “the painting is done in mixed media,” and each statement uses the same word to communicate very different, but sometimes related, concepts. This confusion is not merely sloppy…

I. The Fear It is difficult for me to believe that I am coming up on thirty years of teaching skill-based art. While my memory may now struggle with the many names and dates involved in that journey, nearly every struggle and victory that unfolded in the studio under my watch, whether in a college classroom, a private academy, or an open workshop, remains remarkably clear. Just as vivid are the memories of the many stresses and apprehensions I faced in developing an effective visual arts curriculum to serve countless aspiring creatives worldwide. There was quite a bit to navigate,…

A great question came up on Instagram yesterday about some of the potential issues with intermixing graphite and white pastel (chalk/charcoal-white.) Mixing graphite with white pastel or chalk/charcoal-white is usually problematic, not because of any chemical reaction, but because the materials behave very differently on the surface of the paper. The issues tend to fall into three main categories: adhesion, optical mismatch, and the (somewhat) unpredictable effects of fixatives (if added into the mix). From a handling perspective, graphite tends to plate and subtly burnish the drawing surface. Its microscopic flakes (called basal planes) are flat and slightly greasy, and under pressure (especially when using…

A study from Shanghai Jiao Tong University (School of Design) in China made some waves in 2019 (pun intended) with a careful investigation into an often-encountered yet relatively under-examined bit of ornamentation—decorative wallpaper (Fu, Zhang, & Lin, 2019). Using a test that is designed to assess the strength of cognitive associations by examining latencies in classification tasks (Implicit Association Test), eighty willing participants demonstrated a strong preference for, in terms of semantic decodability (assigning meaning according to convention), regular (repeating motifs) and realistic patterns over random and abstract ones. And while I would not stretch such a narrow study to…

We are delighted to share that our celebrated colleague and dear friend Tanja Gant has received a Merit Award for her colored pencil work, Up in the Air: Turbulence, in the Visual Arts Center’s 15th Biennial National Art Exhibition in Punta Gorda, Florida. The exhibition is on view through March 26, 2026, as part of the Visual Arts Center’s nationally recognized juried exhibition program. Rendered in colored pencil at 15 x 21″, Up in the Air: Turbulence reflects the kind of technical sensitivity, visual intelligence, and expressive control that have long distinguished Tanja’s work. This recognition is a wonderful acknowledgment…

Rethinking Focus, Mastery, and Innovation from the Ground Up In the world of creative and technical pursuits, innovation often conjures images of dramatic breakthroughs, cavalier experimentation, or constant changes to practice and process. Yet for many dedicated practitioners, the path to innovation can paradoxically look static to outside observers. This seeming contradiction, between external stillness and internal momentum, is a topic I think is worth unpacking this month. Not too long ago, a thoughtful colleague remarked on the narrow-looking trajectory of some artists’ careers, questioning whether such focused paths can significantly limit overall artistic growth. It’s a fair question, but…

Thoughts on evaluating the many art “rules” and traditions that continue to thrive in the studio and classroom. (Image: Albert Einstein during a lecture in Vienna in 1921, Public domain) “Art ‘rules’ are often personal opinions shouted loudly with a big stick.” -Kara Castro McGee. American Author Hilary Hinton “Zig” Ziglar is often credited with the popularizing of a clever story about blindly following tradition and dogma. The tale now exists in many versions, with numerous details changed, but the story’s core remains the same. Here’s how it appeared in Ziglar’s 1977 book, “See you at the Top.”: “In this…

Artists inherit a landscape dense with “rules.” We are routinely advised to work from dark to light, to observe fat over lean in oil painting, that warm lights produce cool shadows, and that the subtractive mixing of any two colorants will result in a reduction of chroma. Some of these guidelines are grounded in material science and long-term conservation concerns; others persist because they are useful enough under most conditions. What they share is not infallibility, but an attractive path to efficiency. These are heuristics. They are cognitive shortcuts that reduce complexity, lower error rates, and allow practitioners to function…