Dare to Create
The Joys and Tortures of Learning to Paint
Monroe Katz cuts right to the heart of it: “The artist must find his own way to say what he has to say in paint, pencil or clay, but he has to be in a proper frame of mind, as a passionate artist, playing, experimenting, agonizing over subject matter, daring, failing, cutting free, trusting his or her inner voice, being in the ring rather than in the grandstand.”
Yes, the artist must “dare to create.” From there, Dr. Katz takes us deep inside the high arts of painting and sculpting, showing us how to convey feeling with color, composition, texture, and, above all, the eye and heart of the artist at work. Whether he is depicting a rural landscape, a bridge in the Napa Valley, or the essence of his own daughter, Dr. Katz’s top priority is transmitting through paint or clay what the artist is feeling inside. And when you get that feeling right, he says, it’s like “music to your brush.” As he urges, “Be daring; don’t sacrifice feeling for accuracy, and draw every day.” And through these pages, this gifted artist and storyteller helps guide and inspire you every step of the way.
Using sketches and paintings from his beloved Rembrandt and other great masters, plus his own work, the author explains composition, color, the use of light and shadow, plus the joys of painting to music, and the creative anguish that every artist faces on his journey of exploration and growth.
Dr. Katz has spent his life learning and mastering the elements of great art. As a young boy, he spent hours drawing and painting out on the fire escape of the family apartment in Brooklyn. Then, on a school trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, he found his lifelong inspiration and mentor: Rembrandt van Rijn. To be free to paint as he liked, he studied dentistry at the University of Southern California, and then he practiced dentistry in the Napa Valley for 45 years. With that, he followed his true passion and developed into an accomplished painter, sculptor and writer.
His portrait of a young woman named Daphne won “Best of Show” at the Napa Exposition, and a chapter of his autobiographical novel, Sparring with Rembrandt, won a first-place prize in the prestigious Jessamyn West writing competition in Napa, California. Dr. Katz is retired from dentistry and now paints and writes in the Napa Valley with his wife and their extended family.
