Dear Artist, The quiet town of Jokkmokk (pop. 8000) in Swedish Lapland has been the subject of considerable study. It seems that most of the schoolgirls there are smart, and most of the schoolboys are not. Experts have taken a…
Dear Artist, I’m laptopping this letter from beside a reflecting pool in Houston, Texas. The floodlights are coming up on Barnett Newman’s Broken Obelisk. Beyond, in the Philip Johnson-designed Chapel, there are 14 of Mark Rothko’s final works. New York…
Dear Artist, Perhaps it’s the unsettling variety or the mind-bending sunshine. I’m at sixes and sevens and my stuff is all over the place. Maybe it’s just being away from the home studio. Maybe I’m coming up on another period.…
Dear Artist, Our path leads along a searing beach, around and behind an estuary. We move through a dry forest and over into cattle-lands broadly strewn with giant Baobob and Guanacaste trees. Herons, egrets and ibis give way to rare…
Dear Artist, Among my tropical, under the palapa reading I included Blink, Malcolm Gladwell’s new book on the values and pitfalls of quick and intuitive decision-making. Lots of good stuff here. For example, the various brands of products such as…
Dear Artist, Yesterday afternoon, Franca Temujin wrote and asked, “Have you ever noticed that when you learn a new discipline — printmaking, sculpture, painting, etc., if you’re in the right frame of mind, you bring with you such freshness? How can…
Dear Artist, A friend, who will remain nameless, is a big collector. He knows the price of everything and the value of nothing. We were feet-up, scotching ourselves when I started foaming about the watercolours of John Singer Sargent. “Didn’t…
Dear Artist, Painters paint, writers write, and sculptors make a lot of chips. No matter what our disciplines, these are the facts of successful creativity. Today I’d like to go a little deeper into the “doing” part of what we…