Dear Artist, Naturally, when Leonard Cohen came to Lucca we went to see him. To quote daughter Sara: “These days, if you happen to be a poet you have to sing your words to get your ideas out.” Cohen is…
Dear Artist, You can’t go anywhere around Lucca without bumping into the operatic composer Giacomo Puccini. He’s everywhere — museums, posters, walls, books, postcards, schools and freestanding displays advertising the current Puccini Festival. His music drifts from cafes and salon…
Dear Artist, Artists need to be mindful that their work may be around for a while. Quality work — if history deems it quality — tends to endure. Artists need to give thought to the future, for their work may…
Dear Artist, On Via Fillungo there’s a tower with a hand-wound Swiss clock that has clanged four times an hour since 1754. You can climb high up into the tower and watch the mechanism flip into action every quarter hour.…
Dear Artist, One of the benefits of travel, particularly if you are staying as someone’s guest, is that you get to look over their libraries. Further, you find out what they are reading right now. Here, The Creative Habit by…
Dear Artist, Renaissance means “rebirth.” It’s a term that refers to the intellectual and artistic movement that began in Italy in the 14th century, culminated with Leonardo, Michelangelo and Raphael in the 16th, and has influenced thinking and creating ever since.…
Dear Artist, Over the last while I’ve been sitting down with a few of my dealers. Some are wonderful characters whom I’ve known and worked with for decades. They’re actually a bunch of sweethearts — I let go of the…
Dear Artist, Here’s an alternate to easel painting that’s worth thinking about. Working with small canvases or panels on the lap, while unprofessional in appearance, has some features not available in traditional painting systems. Apart from the fact that in…
Dear Artist, My most recent transgression, two weeks ago, happened when I used an ATV to seek a painting opportunity. This event, disclosed in one small paragraph in a previous letter, caused more than two hundred purists to unsubscribe. I count…
Dear Artist, Recent activities have helped with an understanding of what goes on in the art-making brain. The encouragement of Zen-like lapses can be useful both in the studio and the great outdoors. We start with the understanding that a…