Lucille Smithson Art

Early in August of this year, I found myself in one of those frustrating exchanges you land up having with a complete stranger on FB. This guy, let's call him Eduardo Monteagudo, responds to a picture containing some paintings I happen to like, and he doesn't. And let's just say we disagree. Who is this guy anyway? I wonder. I mean, he's got some pretty strong opinions. I'd like to see what he does for a living. Hah! And so I click on his name, and suddenly find myself on the

Here follows the second half of my conversation with the artist Thomas Wharton. Please also see In Conversation with Thomas Wharton (Part I) here. Q: How do you start a piece? What is the first thing you do. I appreciate this may vary from subject to subject. This tends to vary depending on the subject. With figure or portrait paintings, I tend to start on a surface that has a neutral, mid-value tint. It makes it easier to judge the values and gives me a color to “push agains

It's Sunday morning. While my children are watching kids TV, I'm going through my correspondence with Thomas Wharton, a multi award winning New Mexico based artist. It's only been a week, but I already have so much information from our exchanges that I'm now having to decide how to structure this conversation because there is such a wealth of really great material and I don't want to leave anything out. I get the feeling that if we were to meet in person it might start as lun

It's not often you meet someone as talented as Frank Oriti who is as down to earth, self effacing, and without the ego and pretentious posturing that artists with a lot less talent have. Beyond being a magnificent painter, he is intelligent, articulate, and engaging. I met Frank in 2014 when he and photographer Peter Larson photographed my children ahead of a commission that Frank was undertaking for us. We have remained in correspondence and have developed a friendship since