Dear Artist, The original ultramarine blue was made from the semiprecious stone lapis lazuli. Processes for making the pigment in the West date from the 12th century, but it was being made six centuries earlier in Eastern countries. Its name…
Dear Artist, Naturally, because of my extreme incompetence at keeping records, I’m fascinated with the subject of record keeping. Recently I was given a small device that hooks on my belt and keeps track of some of my daily activities.…
Dear Artist, In one-on-one mentoring there’s the advantage of offering specifics. By getting to know an individual the mentor is able to give personality-suited and need-driven advice to the mentee. For example “Put the kids on yogurt so you will…
Dear Artist, My friend Ted Hesketh is both a painter and a musician. His main business is going around to schools and universities giving workshops in musical composition. The day before yesterday, while we were out in my floating studio,…
Dear Artist, Thanks to everyone who wrote so eloquently and intelligently about “ego.” There were far more letters than we could conveniently put into the responses which can be found at the previous letter, Ego. So if ego is such…
Dear Artist, Art historian Jack Flam has written a new book about the relationship between Matisse and Picasso. It’s useful reading for any artist who has a close and competitive friend in the same business. Matisse and Picasso were strikingly…
Dear Artist, “Don’t play what’s there, play what’s not there,” said the jazz artist Miles Davis. His thought is one of the keys to avoiding the boringly ordinary — “the borinary.” Many works of art are what I call “one-two.”…
