Search Results: j (2559)

Letters madison-tyrell_1
7

A private message arrived through social media: “I am a recent grad from the BFA program at Queen’s. I have just moved to Vancouver after a year travelling and attending a residency in Berlin. I was told by Jan and Otis that you would be a great person for me to contact about getting some information on the art scene in Vancouver. It would be great to meet an established artist who could give me a few pointers on where to start out.” Attached was a link to a clean and concise, create-your-own website showing work from the last two years.

Letters albert-namatjira_waterhole-macdonnell-ranges_1950s
20

Amid 20th Century masterworks here at the Art Gallery of South Australia glimmers a collection of small watercolour landscapes: delicate white ghost gums striped in creeping shadow, wisps of desert brush and tumbleweed, weighty, dirt-red hills under distant clouds. Unlike the museum’s flashier acquisitions, the landscapes hint at timeless spaces, their strokes describing light and leaves, inviting us in with a quiet ease. I drag my nose through a plump, dauby stand of sap green gums, whispering aloud, “Who, what, when, where?”

Letters lucca
28

Nine summers ago, a New York friend told me of an American writer she knew living in Italy and looking to swap studios. I scraped together a ticket and rented a piano to be delivered the day I arrived. A few months later, the writer’s neighbour picked me up at the airport and, as she placed my bag inside the door, invited me to come later to a small dinner party in her apartment. “I’m here to work,” I ached, but her eyes, like grey almond Modiglianis, turned minutely downward at my stupidity. “See you at nine-thirty.”

Letters ruskin_view-of-amalfi-1844
11

On the value and importance of drawing, teachers often ask, “Why is it most people don’t sign up for drawing classes? Painting classes are always more popular.” Also asked, “Is it true that John Ruskin used to run drawing classes for factory workers?”

He did. Ruskin believed in drawing. He thought it was part of the informed life and good for everybody. One of the most eloquent art advocates and critics of all time, Ruskin himself made thousands of fine and sensitive drawings.

Letters emily-carr_deep-forest
9

A subscriber wrote, “Success as an artist to me is when you go to sleep your last thoughts are about creating. When you wake up in the morning your first thoughts are about creating. It comes from the gut, from your insides.”

They say that if you wake up in the morning looking for a cigarette, you’re addicted. Quite a few creators — not all — fit the profile described. Further, it seems there’s often a relationship between our feelings of success and some sort of addictive behavior. But unlike other habits that may threaten health and happiness, this condition might just be good for you.

Letters i_am_big_bird
19

As a five-year-old who loved drawing and painting, Caroll Spinney discovered puppets after seeing a performance of The Three Little Kittens. When he was eight, he bought a monkey puppet at a rummage sale for 5 cents, collected some scrap wood and built a puppet theatre. He made 32 cents from his first show. “That’s when I knew I would be a puppeteer when I grew up.”

Letters hiroshige_crane-flying-over-wave
12

It’s raining in Paris. The open-air book and print kiosks along the Right Bank of the Seine are clothed in plastic sheeting, their owners huddled in overcoats. They smoke soggy cigarettes, pull down their caps and complain to their neighbours how the weather is ruining the business.

Notre Dame Cathedral rises up behind, a grey eminence, as if it has always been there. Through the streaming droplets, I’m looking at contemporary Japanese woodblock prints, clothes-pegged alongside inexpensive, shrink-wrapped reproductions of Hiroshige, Hokusai and Utamaro.

Letters alexandre-denouy_rousseau-meditating
10

I am dedicating this letter to a nutty old Frenchman because Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-78) (not Henri — Le Douanier — Rousseau, the primitive painter) was one of the most valuable creative thinkers of all time. This unsettled and often irrational writer had a direct effect on the sentiments that we express today — sentiments that many artists stated in those letters.

In 1749 Rousseau entered a competition and won first prize for his answer to the question: Has the progress of the sciences and arts contributed to the corruption or improvement of human conduct?

Letters edward-hopper_nighthawks
29

There are all kinds of envy — including the kind that Freud thought he detected. The kind I’m talking about is called professional jealousy. Some artists have it bad. Salieri had it for Mozart. Who wouldn’t? It’s supposed to be one of the main sins. I’ve had lots of confessional letters from artists. They’re jealous of the success and talent of others. It happens everywhere — at art schools, with the artist next door, even sharing the same studio. One woman wrote to say that the envy she felt for her friend’s paper tole drove her to stop working in the medium.

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