If you like our writing, we’d be much obliged if you would click the ❤️ or the 🔁 icon on this post so more collectors, art lovers, and artists can discover us on Substack. 🙏 A daily newsletter featuring today’s finest visual artists. Today's Newsletter is Brought to You by BOLDBRUSH.Free Art Marketing Webinar with Oliver SinFree and Open webinar for all visual artists happening next Thursday, March 28th at 11:00 AM CDT!Join us for a free, artist-focused webinar as we dive into art, creativity, & marketing with renowned artist Oliver Sin. Along with industry experts Clint Watson, BoldBrush’s Founder & the marketing team. This webinar is open to all artists! Thursday, March 28th at 11:00am CDT (12:00pm EDT, 10:00am MDT, 9:00am PDT) BoldBrush Recommends: Bruce HancockBiographyI suppose every artist who did not start an art career until middle age or later will tell much the same story as mine. As a child I drew extensively and even as a young adult I painted and exhibited watercolors with modest local success. But without formal training or exposure to other artists (long before the internet) my personal artistic journey slowed to a near-halt. Predictably my focus soon drifted to more practical pursuits. To put in another way, which many fellow artists may also recognize and identify with, life intervened for the next 35 years. At the age of 60, more or less, I began to paint again. I have studied with many gifted artists and art instructors including Howard Rees, Dan Edmondson, Qiang Huang, Fongwei Liu, Kathleen Dunphy, Michael Siegel, Suchitra Bhosle, Craig Nelson, Chris Legaspi, Terry Miura and Steve Huston. Of course painting side by side with many talented art friends has been a more valuable than I can express. Before meeting and learning from all of the wonderful artists mentioned above, my bookshelves sagged under the weight of 40 plus years of art and art instruction books. A special few of those books had such impact on me that I feel like they are old friends. First - because they came first - the Walter T. Foster Art books, which at $1.00 plus 4 cents tax took my entire weekly allowance and four more pennies that I had to scrounge. But the excitement of finding a new Foster Art book at the drugstore magazine rack remains with me today. Later I found other friends like Andrew Loomis, Drawing the Head and Hands; Charles Reid, Painting Portraits in Watercolor and Painting Figures in Watercolor; John Howard Sanden, Portrait Painting From Life in 29 Steps; John Pike, John Pike Paints Watercolors; and Richard Schmid, Alla Prima. Thanks to all of those instructors, friends and art book authors for gentle and patient guidance through the fundamentals over all these years - but most of all for opening the door to pure joy and the possibilities of art. I am a 4th generation native Californian. My great, great, great, grandfather Jonathan Barton came to California during the Gold Rush. Later he returned to Missouri, gathered his family including his adult daughter, Serena Barton Hancock - my great, great grandmother - and returned to settle for the rest of their lives in the Great Central Valley. Grandfather Jonathan's marker can be found in a pioneer cemetary east of Lodi near the now-vanished town of Elliott. Serena's grave is known to be about a mile North, where their ranch was located, but the exact location has been lost to time. Jonathan's actual grave is probably next to Serena and her sons and others whose markers are gone, plowed under by a farmer afraid a piece of his land would become a historical site. The history, places and people of California and the Great American West have formed me and are the subjects of my art. The possibilities are as endless as the land is vast. I strive to capture the timelessness of the land, the strength of the people, and most of all the emotions I feel for both. When I am successful with a painting all of that has something to do with it. And it is just as exciting as finding a new Walter T. Foster Art book at the Five and Dime more than 60 years ago. Learn More About Bruce Hancock Creating Art is about Creating Magic. New Artwork by FASO Members Your art could be here tomorrow, for free. |