Dear Artist, Last Friday I gave a talk to fifty artists at the Leighton Art Centre near Calgary, Alberta. Formerly the home and studio of Barbara and A.C. Leighton (1901-1965), it commands a spectacular view of the Rocky Mountain foothills. Leighton…
Dear Artist, Woody Allen has been quoted as saying he went into film to meet girls. What else might an insignificant little guy do to get noticed? He might have gone into one of the other forms of art-making as…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, while hanging out in my studio with some fellow travellers, we got worked up about squinting. We agreed it is one of the most important things we do. “Squinting demands a twice-weekly letter on its own,” someone…
Dear Artist, Researchers at the Volen Center for Complex Systems at Brandeis University have taken a second look at “imitation learning.” It seems that when natural talent is added to one’s flagrant imitation of others, what results may be the…
Dear Artist, “One thing about Indianapolis,” says the taxi driver as we pass by the almost hundred-year-old Indy 500 racetrack, “there’s plenty of parking.” I’m noticing that perhaps more than any other mid-sized city in the USA, Indianapolis embraces the…
Dear Artist, The tale of Beatrix Potter, creator of Peter Rabbit, Jemima Puddle-Duck and Mrs. Tiggy-Winkle, makes a charming movie. Renee Zellweger is brown-haired, frumpy, sensible and British-accented in her characterization. Beatrix is spunky and determined to face life on…
Dear Artist, As I’ve grown older I’ve noticed a decline in my ability to draw. That is, my facility to draw lines that show the way things look is less than it used to be. I put this down to…
Dear Artist, Conventional wisdom says you must get your sleep: next day’s creativity demands it. Repeated tests show that creativity is one of the first faculties to suffer from sleep disorders and deprivation. Twenty percent of the population has trouble…
Dear Artist, On her last day of high school, Kelly McArthur was called back into the art room. Mr. Brissenden presented Kelly with a large cardboard box filled with a range of art materials — watercolours, pastels, coloured pencils, felt markers,…
Dear Artist, In the potter’s art there’s a magic time when the kiln finally cools and the potter opens up to see what she has inside. The intercession of the “kiln god” is one of the great principles of art…