Dear Artist, A “second breath” is a restart of a work after getting a second opinion from yourself. I made up that line while I was walking this morning — so it’s my lead-in to an overdue letter on methods…
Dear Artist, Walking briskly, pushing the blood to your extremities, alone and with minimal distraction along the path, concentrating the mind on the thighs’ movements, you trigger imagination and focus. In other words, brisk walking is a form of creative…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, a subscriber who asked to remain anonymous wrote, “I recently got into a very good gallery in another city. I included the retail pricelist used by all my galleries. When they posted my paintings on their website,…
Dear Artist, Drawing mastery is understanding our world and understanding relationships. Contrary to popular belief, drawing doesn’t mean trailing a line around things — it means seeing and reporting the relative distances between things. Drawing is a non-literary way of…
Dear Artist, In the afternoon, the smell of ganja drifted down the beach, giving a mild creative abandon to my normally controlled painting activities. I’d been aware of a few dreadlocked, Haile Selassie-type characters down there — now they were…
Dear Artist, The business guru Peter Drucker admitted motivation was a sticky wicket. “We know nothing about it,” he said. “All we can do is write books about it.” Our own Resource of Art Quotations holds a huge variety of angles…
Dear Artist, In the studio or on the road, many artists find they’re at their most creative when they’re simply on the lookout for joy. When a job has some sort of outside payoff — typically cash — it’s known…
Dear Artist, Patagonia is well known for its condors, but it also has lapwings. These large plovers are seen on mountain pastures and fallow fields. They make a loud, scolding cry when you get too close. I used to see…
Dear Artist, Back in design school a fellow named Brian painted from the top down. Brian painted like he was pulling down a blind. Anecdotal evidence here, but almost all the “top-downers” I’ve met have been men. Their work has…
Dear Artist, In this part of my journey, in a cathedral of eucalyptus, I’m suddenly interrupted by a flock of noisy parrots, like agitated angels shifting high above in the canopy. Out on the lake, black-necked swans glide against a…