Recently someone asked me, “Who is your favorite artist?”

It is impossible for me to choose which ONE artist is my favorite artist, as I have MANY favorites. Picasso is certainly up there, as are Soutine, Monet, Matisse, Moses, Degas, Cezanne, Gauguin, Cassatt—too many to count.

There is, however, one in particular whom I have loved all my life without ever wavering. The other artists and I have had a few problems over the years—disagreements or differing opinions—but I have never had a problem with one of the very first artists I was introduced to as a child: Renoir. The guy just shouts out to me, “Be Happy!” Renoir’s paintings all have a sunny glow to them that I have never been able to reproduce, and his bright color treatment has a quality about it that is almost otherworldly. His subject matter is always simple and speaks to the world as an example of how the world SHOULD be and not how it has become. His still-life paintings are delightful, his seascapes sunny and inviting, his landscapes almost mystical, and his women are the way women ought to be, healthy, and shinning with an inner glow that has somehow been lost in our contemporary age.