Excerpts from this interview appear in the January 2008 issue of Kaizen, CEE’s newsletter. Below is the full interview.

Michael Newberry’s painting career has spanned three decades. He has exhibited throughout Europe and the United States and taught life drawing, drawing and composition, and painting at Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles. He has established the Newberry Workshop, sharing his knowledge through a series of online mini-tutorials. He has also published several essays and lectures on aesthetics and the philosophy of art.

Kaizen: When did you first become interested in painting and start thinking about it as a possible career?

Newberry: I started painting when I was about eleven, after falling in love with Rembrandt’s art work. My grandmother bought me a book of his work for my birthday. I enjoyed going through it, and I began drawing and painting. But as far as a career, that didn’t happen until much later, in my twenties, when I started examining what the life of an artist would be and whether or not I had the skills to make it worthwhile to follow up on painting.

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