Mary Cassatt — Learn, Make, and Discover Inspired by the Artist

1. Learn — from the artist Mary Cassatt

“There are two ways for a painter: the broad and easy one, or the narrow and hard one.” — Mary Cassatt

When Mary Cassatt said this to her friend and patron Louisine Havemeyer in her Paris studio, she wasn’t talking about fame or comfort. She was describing the path she chose — the narrow and hard way of making honest, disciplined art.

Cassatt turned away from the easy approval of the Salon and pushed instead toward something truer: her own vision of women’s lives, light, and color.

For us Encore Artists, her words are a reminder that growth rarely feels easy or graceful.

I am struggling a little right now as a painter — I need to create a new way of working. My old methods are not bringing my ideas to life. I keep redoing my paintings endlessly and spending 90% of my time making corrections, not developing a painting with a coherent vision. I am not enjoying this stuck feeling. (It sucks, in fact.) I know the discipline I need to apply, but change is hard. I get so carried away with my fast and loose strokes when I paint.

I need to take the next steps from painting “broad and easy” to developing a plan, with a passionate concept, doing some color and value studies — then making the vision come to life.

Mary Cassatt can help me, and maybe you. She suggested the narrow and hard path is one where you have to stop and pause, analyze what isn’t working, and start again. This is not an intuitive, fun, free, or “broad and easy” part of the painting process. This kind of thoughtful pausing and thinking doesn’t feel effortless.

And yet — I hear you, Mary Cassatt. I can learn, change, and grow, and take my own advice.

2. Make — sketch an everyday ritual

Mary Cassatt devoted her life to showing that the simple, often‑overlooked gestures of women — pouring tea, reading, bathing a child, sewing by a window — could be as worthy of art as grand historical scenes. She found grace and dignity in the smallest moments.

Prompt: “The Beauty of the Everyday”

Time: 10 minutes Materials: Pencil or pen and a sketchbook (optional: light wash of watercolor or colored pencil) Set‑up: Sit quietly in your space. Identify one small, repeated ritual you do — pouring coffee, taking your morning vitamins, brushing your hair, feeding a pet, watering a plant, folding fabric.

Minutes 1–3. Visualize. Observe. See the action in your mind (or get up and do the ritual). How do you feel about it? Positive? Annoying? Write it down.

Minutes 4–7. Make a “frozen visual moment” of this ritual. Sketch it. Make fast, loose lines that feel like the movement. Don’t worry about accuracy — just capture rhythm and shape. Cassatt believed truth comes through looking, not perfection.

Minutes 8–10. Layer light, color, and feeling. Add a few marks of shading or color to suggest where the light touches the form. Ask: What emotion lives in this moment? Quiet? Care? Tired joy?

Reflect: How did this make you feel? (Share in the comments on the original post.)

3. Discover

Watch the 10‑minute YouTube video from the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Cassatt was an important and great modernist painter — and a rule breaker. Her art and her journey have so much to teach us.

Love, Eliz