Dear Artist, In 1973, when my Dad chose the site to build his studio, he selected the small pad of dirt beside the suburban split-level ranch he’d just bought with my Mother. It was neither a warehouse in an industrial park, or…
Dear Artist, From time to time many of us are called on to critique the work of others. In the classic formula, the “critter” stands beside a well-lit easel as the paintings of a roomful of “crittees” are brought forward…
Dear Artist, “Zombie Formalism” is a catch-all term for that palatable and interchangeable abstraction seen all over the internet, in the galleries, fairs, home interiors pictorials and coming out of art schools for the last decade. First coined in 2014…
Dear Artist, Mobile easels include everything that goes by land, sea or air. My friend Toni Onley used to paint from the cockpit of his amphibian Lake Buccaneer. Floating studios permit the marvel of drifting — silent, Zen-like contemplation and…
Dear Artist, This week, my twin, James, and I are following a narrow, shoulderless ribbon of pavement around the perimeter of Iceland. The never-setting June sun follows us up and down the moors and along the cliff edges, then disappears…
Dear Artist, New light is being shone on the nature of creativity, and it’s coming from a surprising source: animals. If you accept the idea that we are all fellow travellers on this planet, right down to the simplest amoeba,…
Dear Artist, In 1987, speculative fiction writer Ursula Le Guin wrote an essay entitled Where Do You Get Your Ideas From? Le Guin suggested that there are two myths about how fiction is written: the first being that there is a…
Dear Artist, Inspiration and motivation — how do you find it, where does it come from, how do you maintain it? Rankled by time and money considerations to say nothing of non-supportive others, some folks find it a tough order.…
Dear Artist, A couple of weeks ago, a case began in a chamber of the Paris court to decide if Daniel Druet can lay claim to the authorship of some wax models he made for Italian conceptual artist Maurizio Cattelan.…
Dear Artist, A two-day workshop last weekend refreshed my memory of how artists often go the recipe route. Some, not all, asked regularly and took detailed notes of colours used by the beleaguered demo-doer. Some noses came awfully close to…