Dear Artist, As usual, some of my recent tips baffled a few folks. “Listen to the music that has been within you from your youth,” confused Peter Brown of Oakland, CA. “Is this about marching to my inner drummer,” he…
Dear Artist, Whenever I offer tips to fellow artists I’m aware that a tip may be valuable to one person and a poison pill to another. Lately, on the speaking circuit, I’ve been giving a little talk I call, “Two…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, photographer and digital artist Nikolay Semyonov of Rostov-na-Donu, South Russia wrote, “There are times my eye virtually stops seeing things that might make me press the shutter. This usually happens when I stay too long in the…
Dear Artist, My last letter about getting euphoria from painting raised a few issues. Some folks were positively giddy reporting on the giddy positiveness they got from making art. Others told us the “pleasure centres” of their brains were too…
Dear Artist, Recent studies of “runner’s high” — the well-known euphoria that kicks in when humans run or jog — seem to show an evolutionary base. Apparently humans have traditionally enjoyed running for its own sake — even when avoiding…
Dear Artist, Last Friday I was pacing the studio, bumping into doors and walls, tripping on canvases, knocking over cups of pre-mixed acrylic. “What to do?” I was asking myself. In my panic I briefly impaled myself on a brush…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Richard Alm of Vancouver, B.C. wrote, “I recently completed 151 of the 300 11” x 14″s you requested as part of the “Genn School of Go-To-Your-Room.” I’m getting very itchy to do some larger ones. Do you…
Dear Artist, According to the recently released UN World Happiness Report, Canada’s population is the fifth happiest in the world. Denmark, Norway, Finland and the Netherlands, in that order, are happier. The USA ranks 11th, the UK 18th. According to…
Dear Artist, Last Tuesday Michael Epp of Bowen Island, BC, Canada wrote, “I was intrigued by what you see as Norman Rockwell’s decline with age. Do you think artists must inevitably suffer a waning of their powers as they grow…
Dear Artist, Last Friday, I saw the Norman Rockwell exhibition at the Winnipeg Art Gallery. Having seen it twice before in other cities, this time I concentrated on the stylistic changes throughout the artist’s lifetime. Norman Rockwell (1894-1978) was the…