Dear Artist, On Friday night, after I spoke to a group of painters in a distant city, a young woman came forward and asked, “As a painter of mostly rocks and trees, do you in any way follow current art…
Dear Artist, “Should I go to an art school, should I take a workshop, or should I just work on my own?” Questions like this come in here every day and they’re often tough to answer. Needless to say, I…
Dear Artist, I’m using Mark Tobey for this sticky subject, partly because I met him briefly in Seattle in 1962, and partly because he exemplifies a personality type most of us will recognize. Wisconsin born, Tobey was a leading light…
Dear Artist, I’m not talking about a place in China. “Chunking” is a word psychologists use for a kind of learning and understanding. It means to group elements that might work in unison toward a goal. A good way to…
Dear Artist, During the past ten years we’ve probably learned more about the workings of the human brain than at any time in history. Neuroscientists have been busy digging around in our heads trying to get a glimpse of creativity,…
Dear Artist, Painter Charles Philip Brooks runs a teaching studio in North Carolina. He focuses on the American Tonalist and Impressionist schools of painting. Recently he sent me a letter he’d written for his student Laurie Gayle. I soon realized…
Dear Artist, The other day Verna Marie Campbell of Mission, Kansas, wrote, “Say you have a painting around for a few years and all of a sudden you see something to make it better. What do you do?” Thanks, Verna.…
Dear Artist, My recent mention of “Can fundamentalists be creative?” had readers scurrying to the Psychology Today article. When neurologist Ken Heilman and technologist Russ Donda’s observations were first made public in 2007, there was, of course, a great howl…
Dear Artist, Some recent items in my inbox: “I’ve been busy this past month and not doing much painting.” “My work had to wait.” “Sometimes I’ll sneak in an hour or two.” “These days I can’t paint.” “I have wrung…
Dear Artist, This morning I was on the phone with a painter I’d Googled. He Googled me as we spoke. We looked at each other’s stuff. Then we mutually Googled the same works of the Spanish painter Joaquin Sorolla. We…