One post on the paintings of Paul Cézanne’s is not enough and so I explored his relentless engagement with nature in “The Creaturely Work of Paul Cézanne” over at ThinkChristian, where I blog from time to time.  Cézanne was relentless in his desire to do one thing: paint nature. Yet it was by returning the artist and [...]

Let’s face it. Evangelicals are a pretty grumpy lot when it comes to the arts and culture. We’re perpetually on the lookout for artistic evidence to prove that this is the most evil of generations. In fact, it seems as if many of us delight in being offended so that we can crow about the [...]

  Last week, after finishing Alex Danchev’s stunning biography, Cézanne: A Life (Pantheon, 2012), I  flew to New York to see some of Cézanne’s paintings at the Museum of Modern Art. This is not exactly the kind of behavior one would expect from an evangelical on staff at a conservative Presbyterian church in South Florida. [...]

  Whenever I call someone with Caller ID (which would be everybody these days), they’ll see my 617-Boston area code flash on their screen even though I now reside in Minneapolis. It explains why most of my local calls go straight to voice mail. Who in Minneapolis would be getting a call from Boston? These days, with [...]

Last week I concluded a four-part series over at  Good Letters, the blog of IMAGE Journal. Entitled “The Poetics of Painting,” I explore four foundational aspects of painting as a studio practice: the relationship of the artist and her intentions to the work of art; the pictorial dynamics on the surface of a painting; the [...]