Dear Artist, I’m laptopping you from bed in Chelsea, New York City. It’s minus 14, and out the window a horizontal snow-gust slaps a lone cyclist and his basket-Corgi. He takes all the block dogs out on all the worst days…
Dear Artist, A lot of us around here are known as Badgers. For example, my son James is Jim-badger. Sara is Sara-badger and on good days I get Bob-badger. Then there’s the stuff that the badgers have. We’re actually thinking about…
Dear Artist, During a bumpy period a few years ago in New York, I had a small revelation about how to thrive when things aren’t going as expected. It occurred to me that when we’re in school we seldom question…
Dear Artist, Tonight, as happens often these days, it’s me who closes up the studio. It gets dark early at this time of year. Dorothy and I turn down the heat, close the computers, wet down the palettes, put the…
Dear Artist, Small economies of style are regularly used by evolved painters as a way to speed up the operation and to give freshness and life. This often means looking ahead to potential problematic areas and avoiding those laborious passages…
Dear Artist, A recent issue of the New Yorker Magazine had a cartoon titled “Faith-based cooking.” The example they gave was a faith-based tuna casserole. “I got the recipe from the internet,” says a frazzled woman holding up her dish.…
Dear Artist, From my bedroom window a vast tidal estuary spreads in three directions. In wintertime, when tides cooperate, these flats are a festival of seabirds. A dozen species of ducks overwinter here, as do Western sandpipers, Ruddy turnstones and…
Dear Artist, I’m laptopping you from a rainforest perch overlooking a sweep of winter beach on Vancouver Island’s West Coast. Evening’s high tide will rescue the kelp whips, sea grasses and defiant squirters below the sand. The Lennard Island lighthouse…
Dear Artist, Every Christmas someone’s painting falls off the wall. It happened again this year — a small, plaintive voice at the end of the phone: “I’m sorry to bother you Mr. Genn, but our big one of yours fell…
Dear Artist, A few years ago, Adam Leipzig attended his 25th reunion at Yale University. At Yale, he had been a theatre geek and literature major. Mingling in the party tent that summer evening, Adam listened to complaints about emptiness, wasted…