I have been painting and teaching for more than fifty years, and I still feel the same wonder I did as a child with a pencil in my hand.

I studied art education at the Massachusetts College of Art, where I also heard lectures by the great Rudolf Arnheim. In my classes, you will learn the special and unique mixed technique of glazing over an underpainting. I learned this practice in the studio of the painter Zohar, who learned it from Ernst Fuchs, a founding member of the Vienna School of Fantastic Realism.
 I’ve shared what I discovered with students ever since.
The course, “The Dao of the Flowing Brush,” is a way of painting that begins with attention to the classical fundamentals of Art in the First Cycle of Creativity and slowly leads the student to release their hand into a dancing line and flow in the Second Cycle of Creativity.
The course comprises these two cycles, which interact and complement the analytical five elements of Wuxing, mapping the creative cycle from the first spark of an idea to the final touch.

My work moves between slow, quiet pieces, such as portraits, figures, still lifes, landscapes, and quick watercolor sketches of cafés and musicians, where people gather around a table without knowing they are composing. I have exhibited internationally.

I believe art and creativity matter more now than ever. In an age of noise and chaos, painting asks us to slow down, look closely, and be fully present. It is a quiet antidote, a place where attention returns and something whole can be made.

Come and learn to see. The brush will follow.

— Josef Rapaport