Welcome to the Hillsdale College Online Courses podcast.

I am Jeremiah Regan, and I am pleased to be joined by my friend, Professor Emeritus of Art,

and the instructor for your course American paintings, Sam Connect.

Hi, Jeremiah, and hi folks. I'm delighted to be here today and tell you how great this

course is. I had a wonderful time preparing for it and delivering it and hope that you'll

join us in taking the course. Now, the course is American Paintings, and Sam is the

perfect person to teach the course because he taught art, including art history at the college

for over 40 years, but he is in his own right a very accomplished painter. So the old joke

that those who can't do teach does not apply to Sam. Today in American paintings, we're

talking about Lecture 1 American Heroes, and I want to share something very striking that

Sam said that really got my mind working and pulled at my heartstrings. He said, and I'm

paraphrasing, loving painting helps you love mankind all the more.

And in the case of American paintings, it causes me to love Americans all the more.

And I thought, what a great message to introduce a course in appreciating not only art, but the art of our country.

And using that as an avenue by which to better love

our fellow citizens.

Yeah, thank you, Jeremiah.

The course really is a gateway to the splendor and the breadth of American painting.

And Jeremiah said, I totally believe that it makes you become a better citizen, a better person

to study American paintings, to see how Americans have behaved and what they believed in

and expressed over the centuries.

It's a real pleasure to have you, the professor on the course, joining us on the podcast. So let's give our listeners a little bit of an overview of the course. We have four lectures and each one has a theme. The first is American Heroes, then landscapes and cityscapes, everyday Americans, and the final lecture is on battle scenes. Can you tell us a little bit about how you determined

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