Dear Artist, Friends give books because they need to help you with their thinking. Fortunately, or unfortunately, most of my friends are pleasantly agreeable. Here are some from under our tree: Vincent van Gogh: The Drawings — This is a…
Dear Artist, I may be totally wrong on this one. I’m thinking that artists are among those who don’t really want to receive too many gifts for the Holiday Season. It may have something to do with the overabundance of…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Ken Flitton wrote, “It has been pointed out that all of my paintings have a center of interest on the right-hand side. Generally there’s a dark blob on the right because that seems to be how I…
Dear Artist, This morning, Rita E. Acuna of Philadelphia, PA, wrote, “I think I would have preferred not to be gifted with creativity. I had found a true soulmate. He was a pilot, a man of high intellect, who wrote…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Elin Pendleton of Wildomar, California wrote, “Starting in mid October — until whenever — my adventure is to do a daily painting. It’s been exciting and extremely rewarding! I’ve garnered a large mailing list from placing my…
Dear Artist, At the risk of once more dividing the world into two main kinds of people, there are two main kinds of people: There are those who amuse themselves, and those who require others to amuse them. It’s been…
Dear Artist, Dr. Daniel Nettle, a psychologist at Newcastle University, and Helen Clegg at the Open University in Milton Keynes in the UK, have carried out an interesting survey on schizophrenics. This form of mental ill-health is so debilitating that…
Dear Artist, Last week, Marjorie Turnbull wrote to tell me that replicas of her paintings and mine were for sale on a Chinese website called Arch-World. Andrew and I went to have a look right away. It turned out to…
Dear Artist, My letter on the work of Dale Chihuly brought gigabytes into this inbox. Some emails scolded his “factory art” and overuse of workers and assistants. Purists who decried the employment of so many elves were particularly down on…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, my friend Joe Blodgett brought a big yellow print into the studio. It was sort of modern, with a large, undecipherable signature across the lower end. “What do you think of this?” he asked. “Interesting,” I said,…