Dear Artist, “Ready-mades” are those lucky paintings where the composition is pretty well taken care of by Mother Nature. In the Bugaboos, a high mountain range in British Columbia, these sorts of visual blessings are scattered everywhere. Distant patterns of…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Jamillah Ausby of Brooklyn, New York wrote, “My husband, the abstract artist Ellsworth Ausby, passed on March 6th. I have a lot of his art which I would love to sell. He wanted exhibitions in Europe, Africa,…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Laura Tovar Dietrick of Portsmouth, Virginia wrote, “I’m spring cleaning. Sketches, old matted drawings, paintings that aren’t my best, oil studies, unimportant works, etc., have finally found themselves in a big pile. Some, if properly matted and…
Dear Artist, I once had a solo opening on a day the stock market happened to fall out of bed. Arriving late, I was surprised to find a lineup in the street and a crowd of eager buyers inside. “What’s…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Robert Revak Dublac of Unionville, Connecticut wrote, “I am an under-recognized artist. It’s a frustrating time of my career. I’m astounded how arrested our culture has become. There doesn’t seem to be any concept of art evolving…
Dear Artist, You’ve probably heard of the “bucket list.” It’s the list of things you want to do before you kick the bucket. One of mine is painting a couple of peaks in the Argentine Andes from the Patagonian pampas…
Dear Artist, I’m wandering around the galleries of Santa Fe, New Mexico and Scottsdale, Arizona. While a few are papered over from the recent recession, plenty still exist, though traffic seems to be down. As usual, when the electronic doorbells…
Dear Artist, “Laura” paints tough-looking, thick-necked women in tight skirts and high-heeled jackboots. She does lots of paintings like this, and they’re not self-portraits. Laura turned out to be delicate and petite, with a gentle, apparently happy, thankful and optimistic…
Dear Artist, I’m laptopping you from Ansel Adams’s room in the beautiful old home of Mabel Dodge Luhan in Taos, New Mexico. It’s now a B and B and conference center. In these hallowed rooms Mabel entertained some of the…
Dear Artist, We live in miraculous times. I’m set up on a mesquite hillside overlooking the delicately tinted low-rise pueblos of Santa Fe. The crisp morning air is blessed by the call and occasional appearance of a canyon wren. Out…