This website is an outgrowth of years of working with college students, and it embodies many of the concepts evolved in an attempt to make the experience of art accessible to a generation educated in “reading, writing and arithmetic.” It generally requires artistic intuition combined with heightened sensibility to make worthy art — and understanding that art necessitates the cultivation of perceptual awareness as well as knowledge about its origins.

The author hoped students of art on many levels may find a new paradigm here for “wrapping their senses and their minds” around sculpture, buildings, paintings and myriad other forms of creativity. In large measure, this effort is a tribute to the discernment of one of the author’s great teachers, who having been buffeted across two continents, opened new vistas of perception to a developing student of art history. May his legacy also be the author’s gift to you!

About the Author

Prof. Robert F. Westervelt (1928 – 2021) received his PhD degree from Emory University (1970) in Atlanta, with a concentration on 19th-century American Visual Arts as an Expression of Demotic Culture. Prior to that, he was recipient of a Masters of Fine Arts from Claremont Graduate School in California (1956) with emphasis on ceramics, art history and design.

His undergraduate degree was from Williams College in Massachusetts. His forty-year college teaching career began at San Bernadino Valley College and Mt. San Antonio Jr. College in Southern California, and was later focused at Agnes Scott College in Atlanta, where he taught ceramics, art history and sculpture for 24 years. Retiring in 1980 to Gainesville, Ga., Dr. Westervelt became Chair of the Gainesville College Art Department and introduced Computer Graphics in the curriculum, along with drawing, basic design, sculpture, art history and art appreciation.

By combining his early writing background (McGraw-Hill), computer training and extensive photographic research utilized in teaching (10,000 slides), the author is able to pass on insights gleaned from a lifetime of study. All visual materials remain property of artist or institution holding work.

Notice of copyright and takedown policy:

This work is solely the property of the author and uses a wide variety of visual materials to illustrate its thesis. Many of these digitized illustrations are of works in museums, private collections, or in other books. The author is publishing this website free of cost to the reader and is deriving no profit of any kind from its sale or distribution, directly or indirectly.

If an owner of rights to any artwork that appears in this publication objects to its use, wishes to claim superior rights on its publication, and wishes its removal from this website, please contact artmorphology@gmail.com with claim.

Any reproduction of portions of this material for personal use or profit will require written permission from the appropriate copyright holder, including both the author’s representative at artmorphology@gmail.com and owners of rights to associated artwork.