Dear Artist, Yesterday, my friend Chuck Putnins, whose other life is anesthesiology, wrote, “Next year I’ll be taking 6 months off work from May 1 to November 1. During that time I want to get better at painting and develop…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, my studio computer jingled with a question that concerns a lot of us. Antonia Mitchell wrote, “While I’m an established artist, I still have a problem. I’m continually compelled to experiment with different forms of art. When…
Dear Artist, In May, a police detective called to let me know that one of my Dad’s paintings had been recovered from a stash of over 1,000 works of art found in three storage lockers around the Saanich Peninsula on…
Dear Artist, Yesterday Alexis Ramos wrote, “I’m impressed that you’ve worked as an artist full time for all of your life. What would you recommend to a young person like me who wants to make a decent living as an…
Dear Artist, An excellent Quebec painter, Lorne Bouchard, once gave me some advice. He told me that a painter needs to work from three sources — from self-generated photo reference, from life, and from the imagination. “All painters,” he said,…
Dear Artist, An artist friend wrote, “Are you very reclusive like your Dad in the art scene? Or do you network more?” In 2003, just as I was about to move to New York, I read an essay in The…
Dear Artist, Recently, Judith Meeks of Toronto, ON, Canada, wrote, “I’ll soon be chairing a panel discussion called ‘Finding Your Voice.’ In your understanding, how do we translate our life experiences into our paintings and express who we really are?…
Dear Artist, In 1973, when my Dad chose the site to build his studio, he selected the small pad of dirt beside the suburban split-level ranch he’d just bought with my Mother. It was neither a warehouse in an industrial park, or…