Dear Artist, Along with the wide range of available manias like pyromania (setting fire to property), trichotillomania (twisting your hair until it falls out), dromomania (the intermittent compulsion to travel and get away), and erotomania (looking for love in all…
Dear Artist, We have a patio built out above our overgrown ravine. If I stand on the edge I can drop a ball down into the jungle. Though she can’t see where the ball goes, Dorothy will enthusiastically tear around,…
Dear Artist, Not everyone knows what I’m talking about when I drag the word “homeomorphic” out in mixed company. Specifically to do with equality of shapes in differing chemicals, it’s not in the art books. But it’s a valuable creative…
Dear Artist, Travellers along Florida highways in the 1950s and ’60s might remember odd characters standing along the road selling paintings. In those days African-American artists, particularly in the South, had trouble getting work into galleries. Self-taught Alfred Hair, James…
Dear Artist, Some artists report periods of general anxiety that come and go during their careers. The condition may include heart palpitations, sleeplessness, panic attacks, depression and feelings of inadequacy. While some of these are just part of living, they…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Bob Ragland of Denver, Colorado, who claims to be a Non-Starving Outlaw Artist, wrote, “I just had a very good write-up in the Denver Post. I arranged to be interviewed by a reporter. I never talk to…
Dear Artist, Work can be made masterful with a heightened sense of observation and a willingness to convey. It’s a matter of picking up on what may seem to be small bits of information. Many painters look but do not…
Dear Artist, Have you ever wondered about those little mental lapses you have while you’re working? I’m talking about those times when the brush keeps moving but your mind goes somewhere else. It’s the creative equivalent of “taking your mind…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, I went around for a visit with my friend Gerry Petersen. He has just received word from his doctor that he has terminal, inoperable lung cancer. Concerned as anyone would be, he’s also philosophic about it –…
Dear Artist, Yesterday, Brian Oschwald of Mendham, N.J. jingled the studio inbox: “Are there any authentic, intellectually respectable reasons for the apparent divide between the contrasting and often opposing worlds of 1) “serious” contemporary painting and its practitioners, and 2)…