There's no feeling quite like exploring a beautiful art museum. Between the lingering smell of dried paint hanging in the air and the subtle hum of people discussing each work, it always leaves me ...

Mark Grotjahn (pronounced Groat-john) is widely recognized for his painting prowess. Since the mid-1990s, he’s made radiating butterfly-wing-like bursts of rainbow color that create schisms in vision; ...

In an increasingly digital world, where design software can turn anyone into an instant Leonardo da Vinci, it’s easy to forget that signs were once lettered by hand using sable brushes, mineral ...

As recently as the 1980s, when someone needed a storefront, mural, banner, billboard, or street sign, the first person he would call was a sign painter, a skilled tradesman who would do the work by ...

Share on Facebook (Opens in new window) Share on X (Opens in new window) Copy this page's address to your clipboard Link copied to clipboard Imagine, if you would, a world without signs— no doubt a ...

“I thought that some day either someone needs to do a film about me, or I have to write about this,” said Phil Vandervaart. He was explaining how his work as a sign painter has been for love, rather ...

We meet the makers and painters continuing the aesthetic legacy of their cities, creating and preserving signs with gold leaf, ochre-white paint and neon tubes. The letters that are emblazoned onto ...

Sean Starr coats his angled Fitch brush in the white, oil-based 1 Shot paint. With a steady hand, he slowly rounds the brush to perfectly line the outside of an uppercase O. The sign reads “MORRISSEY ...

Andrew and Kelsey McClellan have revived the delicate, nearly-lost art of gold-leaf sign painting. One of Chicago’s last gold-leaf sign painters, Robert Frese, shared gilders’ guarded secrets with ...