Dear Artist, Mist rises on a mile-long white sand beach. It’s an island — almost deserted. There’s dazzle: puddle-jumping, tide pools, crabs crawling, seaweed and sun-bleached, haphazard logs. Behind, the dark forest looms: salal, spring flowers poking. Gulls call. Eagles…
Dear Artist, Last Saturday morning, Felicity, the neighbour’s daughter, burst into my studio. “I got this for my birthday,” she said. “What do you think would look good on it?” It was a blank 12″ x 16″ stretched canvas. In…
Dear Artist, Alar Jurma of Montreal, Canada is an artist who practices yoga. He writes, “My interest in meditation came from a realization that the condition of my mind had a lot to do with how I painted. Clutter in…
Dear Artist, When I was a student at Art Center School in Los Angeles, California, I used to lift the odd glass at a certain suburban bar. One evening I was sitting next to an elderly gentleman who looked vaguely…
Dear Artist, Mel Zeoli of Florida wrote, “I paint in the impressionist style and the painting is breathtaking (my ego talking) — then I work on the foreground. If I give it too much detail it takes away from the…
Dear Artist, “Nothing is selling,” writes Ron Sanders of Fort Wayne, Indiana. “Last year I had my worst sales in years. What am I doing wrong?” Ron is an accomplished painter. Ron gave me a list of what he thought…
Dear Artist, Janet Rasmussen wrote yesterday, “I had thought my art would be getting into high gear right about now. No, I’m stalled. You see, I have just been diagnosed with chronic myelogenous leukemia. I must be spelling those awful…
Dear Artist, “I am very depressed and deeply disgusted with painting. It is really a continual torture.” That could have been taken from my inbox, but it wasn’t. It’s a quote from Claude Monet. Monet may have been brilliant, but…
Dear Artist, Rudyard Kipling noted that if you don’t get what you want, it’s a sign either that you did not seriously want it, or that you tried to bargain over the price. For artists the price is very often…
Dear Artist, For her university thesis, Laurie Seskey asks us this question: “Why do you make art?” I included it in the previous clickback and some responses have already come in. I knew we were onto something when Shirley Harding…