This thing of pushing paint around, is it not an attempt to capture time and eternity? Einstein and Michelangelo had something in common.  Einstein considered the unthinkable, that time was not bound by a 24 - hour clock.   Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Durer also tinkered with time. They captured a moment, a glimpse of some beauty, some eternal truth, and compressed it on stone, canvas, or paper.  When an artist is moved by the glimpse of some moment of breath-taking beauty, he has a fleeting suspicion of something more glorious than the temporary tattered by time.  He realizes for an instant than man was made for something more than the here and now.  The fall tree decked in gold, the mountain peaks of purples and blues, the shinning eye of a tear-touched eye, all are  windows into some eternal beauty or truth that our souls long for.  

I collect definitions of art.  Yesterday I heard a new one. “All form is art.  All form communicates.” The speaker, RC Sproul, then went on to say that one cannot chose to not have art because everything we build, wear, use, etc. is form; therefore, it is art.  The creation itself was/is a form that communicates the message of the Creator.  I suppose if one does not believe in a Creator, then one would have trouble with this definition.  But if all form was created by God or  by someone whom He creates, the question isn’t whether we will experience art or not. The question is whether we will experience good or bad art. 

Books are powerful.  Books have been some of my best teachers when it comes to art.  In teaching a few classes and workshops, I have been making a list of the art books that I have found most useful, books I go back to again and again, sometimes for principles and concepts, sometimes for techniques, sometimes for inspiration. 

These are the first ones that come to mind:

For drawing: Harold Speed, The Practice and Science of Drawing;  Joy Thomas, The Art of Portrait Drawing, Robert Hale, Drawing Lessons from the Great Masters, Betty Edwards, Drawing on the Right Side, George B Bridgeman, Complete Guide to Drawing from Life

For painting: Edgar A Whitney, Complete Guide to Watercolor Painting; Harold Speed, Oil Painting Techniques and Materials; Thomas S. Buechner, How I Paint: Secrets of a Sunday Painter, Betty Edwards, Color; Mark Christopher Weber, Brushwork Essentials; Charles Harrington, Acrylics:The Watercolor Alternative; Margot Schulzke , A Painter's Guide to Design and Composition: 27 Masters Reveal Their Secrets; Jane Hofstetter, 7 Keys To Great Paintings., Roberta Carter Clark, How to Paint Living Portraits.

 Books I want to own:

Richard Schmid, Alla Prima: Everything I know About Painting, Kirk Richards and Stephen Gjertson, For Glory and For Beauty

 These lists will obviously grow.