Dear Artist, Visitors to Alaska museums and art galleries can occasionally see the work of Fred Machetanz. Fred was a wanderer from the lower forty-eight who lost his heart to northern grandeur. He and his wife Sara built their studio…
Dear Artist, A few minutes ago, Pippi Johnson wrote from Crete, “I’ll be in Greece for thirty days and plan a small painting a day plus ink and wash sketches. I have everything in a wheeled hockey bag. I brought…
Dear Artist, Here’s an exercise and a challenge. The idea is to take close-up photos of some of the more interesting areas of your work — cropping them off into smaller compositions. My thought is that you might send a…
Dear Artist, Out in Monday’s sunshine I was patio-painting and one of Robert Henri’s thoughts kept doing stuff to me: “Don’t paint the material. Push on to paint the spirit.” I’m always looking for the spirit. Later, when checking the studio…
Dear Artist, Readers of this letter will know that I advise the use of a variety of easels. As well as the main studio easel, there’s the secondary easel on which works-in-progress are laid to temporary rest for assessment and…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Mary Jean Mailloux of Oakville, Ontario, wrote, “Recently I’ve been asked for a painting as a wedding present, as a birthday present, and as a keepsake. Of course all these requests, while flattering, take time or cost…
Dear Artist, “Bob’s minutiaescope,” named by friends, is a spade-like, homemade device with a remotely triggered digital camera that takes close-ups of stuff on the ground. For no particular reason apart from the idea that gardens, pathways, beaches and forest…
Dear Artist, These days, high-powered creativity coaches are offering themselves to the world of business. Companies improve their bottom lines with the latest techniques in creative thinking. Much of what they’re saying has been known to artists for some time.…
Dear Artist, This morning Hanneke Spruijt-Teunissen of the Netherlands wrote, “As someone who gets her artistic schooling from evening and weekend courses — how much time did you spend on perspective as a student? How thoroughly are academically trained realistic…