On being casual
Dear Artist, On Monday, I was a member of a jury. All of the entries,…
Author sara genn
Art by mail
Dear Artist, In 1962, Neo-Dada collagist Ray Johnson, along with some of his Fluxus friends,…
Shifting into right brain
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Marjorie Ewell of Cape Coral, FL and Galloway, NJ wrote, “How do…
Selling the selling of art
Dear Artist, Three Mondays in a row, an email appeared with an invitation to submit…
How to beat painter’s block
Dear Artist, A lot of stuff has been written about writer’s block, mainly because writers…
In search of anonymity
Dear Artist, Rumour has it that when J.D. Salinger died in 2010 at the age…
Negative space
Dear Artist, These days no self-respecting workshop instructor goes half an hour without mentioning negative…
How to improvise
“For an artist, greatness happens when you can take something organized and make it feel like it was improvised,” says dance teacher Helena St. Rogers in the drama series, Pose. In painting, you may wonder how to do this without ending up with an aimless jumble. Improvisation, the act of composing without a plan, unfurls in real time but rests on an armature of known structures and experiences, with the goal of getting to a breakthrough. Just as a jazz musician takes a solo over a grid of eight or twelve bars, your improvisation should have a beginning, middle and end.
Form them up
Dear Artist, In the good old days, students in art schools were provided with simple…
Hot executive function
Dear Artist, One of the most engaging aspects of Greyhound, Tom Hanks’ new film about…