Dear Artist, After all these years, within the striving and plodding of art and amongst the drop-kicks of New York and the patient song of our resident California Western Mockingbird, I’ve come to understand that happiness and gratitude are so…
Dear Artist, It’s early Tuesday morning and the studio computer is ringing like a Wal-Mart cash register. Artists are sending “Eyeku” to one another and copying to us. I’m thinking of young Basho, the first Haiku writer, cross-legged on his…
Dear Artist, Behind my Mum’s house, there’s a walking path that follows a river estuary that empties into the Pacific Ocean. Because we are but four kilometres upstream from the house in which we grew up, when we follow this…
Dear Artist, The other night while hanging out at a party a friend reminded me of Walter de la Mare’s “Look thy last on all things lovely, every hour.” Together she and I relished the idea that regularized, fleeting time…
Dear Artist, My grandfather, my mother’s father, Kohei Shimozawa, was one of five children of ancestral landowners from the farming village of Nishioi, north of Odawara City in Kanagawa-ken, Japan. In 1925, when he was 20, in an effort to…
Dear Artist, It’s warm and muggy beside this froggy pond. I’m the shiny guy wearing the Deep Forest Off. Nearby, an Oregon towhee rummages in the undergrowth. In the distance, a barred owl is being harassed by resident robins. With…
Dear Artist, An elite art instructor has grown disillusioned with teaching. When asked if she could identify gifted students, she replied that talent was often lacking but audacity was in great supply. “Audacity” she said, “will only get you so…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Amanda Jackson of Bahrain wrote, “Lively greys! It’s a breakthrough. My work was over-coloured and sometimes in a trite way. I was working ‘en grisaille’ but lately I’ve actually started to see the world in paint —…
Dear Artist, While browsing calls to entry recently, I came across an exhibition aimed at artists over 60. The gallery’s mission, said the call, was “to create a dialogue with the arts community supporting our belief that older, lesser-known artists…
Dear Artist, Back in the good old days, a select few youth were chosen to work in the studios of active and proven masters. After a few years of grinding pigments and other grunt work, they may or may not…