Dear Artist, Last Monday, friends and family gathered to say good-bye to Dad. We celebrated his life at The Surrey Arts Centre, a multi-faceted museum and performance space for artists — young, established, global and local — adjoining a sprawling…
Dear Artist, One summer we rented a home in Pont-Aven. This Brittany village is where Gauguin painted off and on between 1886 and 1890. The pension in which he held forth with Emile Bernard and Paul Sérusier is now a news…
Dear Artist, Behavioural scientist Winifred Gallagher, in Rapt: Attention and the Focused Life, suggests our lives are formed by the attention we give to something, rather than by fate, circumstance, fortune or even chaos. But what happens in those exceptional…
Dear Artist, We are pioneers in one of history’s great events. We now have the potential to connect our images, sounds and written words to every being on planet Earth. This democratization cuts across all traditional lines — of nation,…
Dear Artist, On Tuesday morning, at 10:20am, Dad passed away. He was at home, surrounded by his family. My brother Dave’s Airedale, Stanley, lay on the floor nearby. This day was also my, and my twin brother James’s, birthday. A…
Dear Artist, Stephan Stephansson was born in Iceland in 1853 where his formal education lasted one month. His family immigrated to Wisconsin, USA, where in 1878 he married his cousin Helga Jonsdottir. Repeated crop failures, debt and drought brought the…
Dear Artist, Some artists who might read this, especially the more highly evolved ones, are going to say, “I don’t need to find passion, I’ve already found it.” Fair enough. Here are a few ideas for those who may have…
Dear Artist, On recent afternoons, we can be found sitting beneath our red cedars, daydreaming under what Dad describes as “sharp, vibrant, individual foliage and light.” He’s observing what it’s like to be under the influence of palliative morphine. When Samuel…
Dear Artist, Within easy walking distance of my studio is Crescent Park. When we’re at home, Dorothy and I go there in every season, nearly every day. I’m guessing the park is about a hundred acres and includes playing fields, a…
Dear Artist, Early one morning long ago, I was at my studio easel when an acquaintance, a fellow boater, phoned to give me an unusual tip. “Did you know,” he asked, “that a guy is living on a derelict fish…