Dear Artist, Yesterday, Dana Finch of the UK wrote, “I have been painting for years. I now have to work at a fulltime non-art job but I still consider myself first and foremost a painter, and spend most weekends, evenings,…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Faith Puleston of Herdecke, Westphalia, Germany, put me onto an eleventh century Chinese landscape painters’ biographical collection from the Northern Sung periods. By a Western calendar, we’re talking 969-1279AD. “In an era when painting was a form…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Dan McGrath of Lexington, Kentucky, wrote, “I consider myself an experienced landscape painter, but I see advice from successful artists: ‘Paint what you feel about a subject, not just what you see.’ As an ex-engineer, I don’t…
Dear Artist, For those who might wonder why music plays such a great role in human life and culture, Daniel J. Levitin has written This is Your Brain on Music. The book contains remarkable insights and new information on music,…
Dear Artist, Last night Marion Castle of Kilkenny, Ireland, wrote, “I’m in a lamentable predicament. I wish to offer for sale forty of my paintings that have not been on the market before. I formerly lived in Cape Town, South…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Teressa Bernard of Vancouver, BC, Canada, wrote: “Even though I really love my new space, it’s taken more time than I thought to get acclimatized and to feel like painting. It’s almost like I left my creativity…
Dear Artist, One of the fun things about Blackberry co-dependency is the ability to send and receive emails pretty well anywhere. Up here in the Rocky Mountains, however, the little darling is as mute as a dead gopher. Missing those…
Dear Artist, Getting ready to go up into these mountains requires forethought and planning. As materials must be backpacked, instinct and practicality tell you stuff needs to be light but sufficient. Nothing worse than getting up there and finding you…
Dear Artist, My daughter, Sara, and I are again up to Lake O’Hara and Yoho National Park in British Columbia. Today, in the champagne air of a place known as “The Hanging Gardens of Babylon,” both of us are struggling…
Dear Artist, Randy Pausch was a professor of computer science, human-computer interaction and design at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. In September 2006 he learned he had pancreatic cancer. Feeling the need to spend as much time as…