When 25 new subscribers all have the same zip code, we can determine they are all from an art school or university. A professor of art or a painting instructor may have said to a class, “Here’s someone in the real world who struggles with art every day, writes this letter and gives tips. Subscribe — you might get something out of it.”
Lee Hulcher from Clarkston Valley, Montana wrote, “I love to paint but being self-employed doesn’t leave much time, except in blocks of hours, sometimes days or months apart. Here lies the issue: When I step away from a painting that is going well, I dread the return, due to severe anxiety of messing it up and ruining the started painting. Of course, by the time I actually get to paint I am so stressed that I ruin the painting. I have found myself actually making excuses as to why I can’t paint. Do you have any suggestions, as I have a lot of unfinished paintings I would love to finish.”
“Naive” or “primitive art,” according to arts writer Linda Murray, means “untrained artists in a sophisticated society.” According to Murray, it’s “an unspoiled vision consistent with ‘amateur,’ or ‘Sunday’ painter, admired for its connotations of genuineness and purity of artistic impulse, and freedom from the trammels of professionalism, tradition, technique, and formal training.” The implication is that the genuine article is someone who doesn’t know how to paint properly, but does it anyway. As Ian Chilvers says, “In naive work, colours are characteristically bright and non-naturalistic, perspective is non-scientific, and the vision is childlike or literal-minded.”
Last weekend, a ten-year-old friend took me to summer camp drop-off. We snaked a sea-hugging road through mountain passes while she described the intricacies of geocaching, bouldering, trail riding and ukulele. At bedtime without her Kindle, she told me she’ll be whispering in a cabin of seven others, with two teenaged counsellors on the other side of a soundproof curtain. After Starbucks, the highway narrowed to a dirt road and then a mulch path, where a Hawaiian-shirted adolescent wearing a wooden name badge motioned us with his clipboard into a parking space.
One of the interesting things about Ed Hughes is the deal he cut with his dealer in 1953. The dealer was Max Stern of Montreal’s Dominion Gallery. Ed lived in a bungalow on the west coast of Canada. Ed and Max met only four times. Their deal was done by mail. Ed’s deal was this: “I’ll give you everything I make and you pay me a salary.” Ed was a pretty slow worker — about a dozen paintings a year during his good years. Gradually, his annual salary edged up. Then a new Jaguar was thrown in for good measure. Ed insisted on that. He liked the classics.
A subscriber wrote to say, “I’m in the process of planning a studio to be attached to my new home. I’m checking on what to build; either one of those glazed patio enclosures that are usable all year around, or a traditional frame room with skylights and windows onto a wonderful view. What do I need to think about? I want to get going on it. I can’t wait.”
Robin Timms of North Vancouver writes, “I am hoping you might provide some words of wisdom as to how to make my approach to obtain some critical input from galleries. I am thinking of sending out this letter… and would welcome any advice.”
Robin’s “gallery letter” opens with a detailed artist statement followed by a request: “As an emerging artist, a practical next step in my painting journey is to seek realistic, honest and knowledgeable advice from those experienced in putting gallery shows together — to understand whether my work is gallery-worthy, or whether it even ‘holds’ together as a series.”
The psychologist Dr. Abraham Maslow in his studies of “self-actualizing people” made some interesting discoveries about the fathers of eminent offspring, particularly sons. It seems that certain dads are perceived as “not successful.” These dads are not necessarily losers, but rather men who risked much and fell short. Maslow’s inference was that sons may succeed because their fathers failed.
Yesterday, a young artist messaged: “I recently received my submission review for a juried exhibition, which was terrifying and exhilarating. Until now, it’s been the general public, family and friends’ feedback that have been hardest to sift through. Would you suggest I keep entering juried shows? Or should I use the juror’s crit to make new work before submitting to more?”
One evening when I was turning out the lights and shutting down my studio, I glanced in the darkness in the direction of my easel and had an alarming thought. I realized that all over the world, all kinds of regular people might be doing something similar. Before going to bed they might be casting their eyes around their homes to see that everything was okay. Some of those eyes might catch for a moment on one of my paintings. There are a few out and about.