Plein and simple
Joseph Paquet's article has been reprinted courtesy of the Villager Newspaper in the St. Paul / Minneapolis area.The Villager is the oldest and largest neighborhood newspaper in the Twin Cities.Our thanks to John Wadell, Editor, Villager Newspaper.

Highland Park painter Joe Paquet sits at his desk beside a shaft of midmorning sunshine streaming through the window of his Prince Street studio in St. Paul’s Lowertown. His landscapes hang from the studio’s south wall and the sunlight seems to make them glow. A more studied observation, however, reveals that the light is emanating from the paintings themselves, not the window.

A taconite plant reveals the squalid beauty of industrial decay as seen on a winter afternoon. A colorful row of dilapidated houses is offset by the steely skyline of downtown New Orleans. The viridescent leaves of a maple tree frame the front of a brick house and garage in Lowertown. These are among the images captured in oil by Paquet. A visitor may be reminded of the paintings of Hopper, Winslow or Corot. But though Paquet’s subject matter, style and craft reveal those influences, his rendering of light is “The light of each day should differ from the light on any other day,” Paquet said. “A good landscape painter sees the light of each day as a gift.”
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Brushstrokes
By Stefan Baumann

Stefan Baumann Butterfly

Understanding how to use a brush and how to apply a brushstroke are the first steps in learning to paint.  The most important indicator in determining whether one will learn to paint well is learning how to hold the brush properly and how to move it effectively.

Painting is a specific discipline with rules and procedures. It is not something that artists can do willy-nilly and think that they are creating great artwork.  Great paintings are not created by drawing a subject by holding a brush like a pencil.  Although recreating a subject is the intention of the artist, rendering or drawing with the brush is physically different from painting with a brush.  Rendering is done with the fingers and wrist; painting is done from the shoulder with the whole arm moving as one unit.  One’s fingers and wrist do not move when one is painting.
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