My wife and I visited Rembrandt last night. When you visit Rembrandt's work, you also visit the man and the artist. He comes through to me - clean and clear - 350 years later. Currently, there is a huge exhibition of his etchings at the Chrysler Museum of Art in Norfolk Virginia. It is glorious.

Rembrandt's etchings taught me, as a young artist, how to find the joy in serious work. In HIS first days of etching, while still learning the complex technical issues of printmaking, his work was clunky - it lacked finesse. An artist with less security, openness, and honesty would've DESTROYED these works. Matisse did. Remmy did not. Rembrandt left them for US - for me - intentionally - so I too could SEE we all start at the beginning - no one is a genius from Day One. We CULTIVATE genius. Genius comes from the relentless, everyday, blood and sweat of hard work. Genius is not a "Gift". It helped me through ten and half years of college study in Printmaking. All of my degrees are based in Etching. Rembrandt is The Man.

His images cluster into three categories:

- Serious, biblical (etc.) narratives made for sale and repute,

- Portrait commissions to commemorate great people (or people who wanted to be thought of as great),

- His real loves - common people, everyday events, the land, the sky, the people in his life, and the joy of drawing and printmaking.

For the last 40 years, it's the last category that causes me to stare, study, ponder, and shake my head in amazement at what he did, how he did it, and his utter abandon of the commercial world of his day. You hear the name "REMBRANDT" and you think "Classic Old Master". Well... yes, and no. He also broke nearly every rule of art, and was no less upsetting in his time than "WARHOL" in his. However, unlike Warhol, Rembrandt died in poverty. His innovations took him further and further away from the conventions of his time - and conventions are funded by the wealthy - and the wealthy give lip service to innovation - demanding the innovations stop when they hire an innovator to do work for THEM.

Rembrandt has something to teach everyone. I've hardly scratched the surface.*

Ronn.

*So to speak - a little Printmaking joke, there.