Dear Artist, Our attitudes determine our accomplishments. Recent emails about shared studio spaces, male-female dynamics, creative progress etc., showed us those who see the glass half empty and those who see it half full. Could it be, we wondered, that…
Dear Artist, Like a lot of boys, I was interested in cars. You might say I was nuts about them. I drew them at the drop of a hubcap — filling the margins of my schoolbooks with their curves. Perversion?…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Tim Zeiss of Chicago, Illinois, wrote, “I’m a painter and graphic novelist. I’m 27 and out of college 3 years. I’ve had 18 shows and sold work in every one. I rent a really cool little basement…
Dear Artist, Thank you for a year of such wonderful stuff in my inbox. Fran and Ann (not their real names) tried working together in the same studio. The honeymoon lasted a week. Fran thought Ann was cloning her work,…
Dear Artist, Research at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology has determined artistic men are less likely to be depressed than artistic women. Professor Jostein Holmen and others studied the lifestyle and mental health of 50,000 folks. While both…
Dear Artist, On Friday a man phoned to say he had an old painting of mine. He thought it might be “something personal” and he offered to give it back to me. Two days later Frank and Fiona Evans, both…
Dear Artist, One of the more surprising of Robert Henri’s classroom ploys was to have a model posing in one room and the students painting in another. Even with folks bumping into one another in the doorway, the system was…
Dear Artist, Almost everyone who reads my letters will have had this experience: You’re at work in the studio and a non-art friend drops by. Carrying a conversation with half your brain, you continue painting with the other half. Yesterday…
Dear Artist, One of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World, the Colossus of Rhodes, stood near the harbour. It was constructed by Chares of Lindos over an eight-year period starting in 292 BC. Felled by an earthquake after only…
Dear Artist, Last night I was giving a short talk and signing books at one of our local art clubs. I happened to notice no men were in the hall. The club has many male members, they assured me, but…