kartooner

Sev­eral peo­ple I know hail the art­work of Thomas Kinkade while oth­ers (includ­ing me) think the Kinkade machine has run its course. Per­son­ally, when I think of great Amer­i­can art I think of Nor­man Rock­well. His paint­ings inspired me to become an artist and best of all included the essence of the human spirit within each stroke.

Accord­ing to The Nor­man Rock­well Museum:

Born in New York City in 1894, Nor­man Rock­well always wanted to be an artist. At age 14, Rock­well enrolled in art classes at the New York School of Art (for­merly the Chase School of Art). Two years later, in 1910, he left high school to study art at the National Acad­emy of Design. He soon trans­ferred to the Art Stu­dents League, where he stud­ied with Thomas Fog­a­rty and George Bridg­man. Fogarty’s instruc­tion in illus­tra­tion pre­pared Rock­well for his first com­mer­cial com­mis­sions. From Bridg­man, Rock­well learned the tech­ni­cal skills on which he relied through­out his long career.

Rock­well found suc­cess early. He painted his first com­mis­sion of four Christ­mas cards before his six­teenth birth­day. While still in his teens, he was hired as art direc­tor of Boys’ Life, the offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion of the Boy Scouts of Amer­ica, and began a suc­cess­ful free­lance career illus­trat­ing a vari­ety of young people’s publications.