Browsing: artists

Letters Whistler_Note-in-Red_The-Siesta
6

Artists and art-material suppliers come together at Pearl Paint’s Great American Art Event in New York. “Secrets” here are bought, sold and given away. Popular instructors demonstrate “trees, rocks and water” or “fruit, vegetables and lace” or “how to paint ‘itty bitty’ paintings” or “how to master abstraction.” With lots of free paint, brushes, stretched canvas and art boards, it’s a creative rummage. For many, the gods are in the equipment. Others come for motivation or inspiration. Most are looking for techniques to match the quality of today’s materials.

Letters willem-kalf_still-life-with-drinking-horn
15

A subscriber wrote, “Do you ever get stuck? I’m not producing, yet I have endless ideas. I have a studio doggie, take walks in nature, eat well — all the right stuff — but I’m still stuck. There’s some kind of block when I come back to the cabin. Any ideas?”

n addition to the pillars of a studio dog, a daily walk and a quality snack, one other mysterious component could perhaps aid in the recovery of the blocked artist.

Letters Claude_Monet-Le_Pont_de_l'Europe-Gare_Saint-Lazare-1877
10

Here, in France, potions are in fashion. Miraculous mineral waters, copper bracelets, Thalassotherapy, algae injections, mud activities, the pleasantries of colonic irrigation — there are ways of purging the bad stuff from the lungs, brains and bowels. Going by the number of Boxters and Beamers parked outside the fashionable Miramar in Arzon, Brittany, it would appear that the schemes that sell some of these elixirs are big business. Perhaps it’s got something to do with the perennial French interest in “The Cure.” I overheard one woman say, “Thalassotherapy has better odds than Lourdes.” As an aside, in my opinion, these folks aren’t getting enough roughage.

Letters N-C-Wyeth_The-Duel
24

Studies have shown that if you gather a bunch of nine-year-olds in a gymnasium and describe to them the physics of a back handspring, you’ll see in return a collection of head cocks and fidgets. Instead, researchers noticed that kids will jump to their feet when an actual gymnast performs this right in front of them. A back handspring — like a life in art — is perhaps easier to attempt when you’ve witnessed someone else doing it.

Letters jack-hambleton_cariboo-autumn
6

Spain is a country that gives lessons in the organization of form. I’m thinking of whitewashed villages with soft cubist motifs: light, shade, colour surprise and varied textures of tile, masonry and stone. These magic places seem to tumble from their hillsides for the benefit of art. In narrow streets with singing canaries and sunlit geraniums, there’s abstract energy. Even clothes hung out to dry take on a significance unfelt at home.

Letters jasper-johns_according-to-what_1964
15

While travelling in my twenties before the camera phone, I’d carry a Canon SLR with a 300 millimetre lens — a graduation gift from my parents. The thing weighed 7 lbs — a practically extinct albatross by today’s standards. I accepted the neck ache in exchange for the special reminder to look and compose.

These days, our camera phones and their features take high-res snaps that can be tricked out for saturation and white balance, cropping and sharpening. Instagram and other online sharing platforms allow for immediate connection with other like-minded image junkies.

Letters jerry-wennstrom_nurse-log_detail
0

After painting steadily for six months while doing a minimum of socializing, I gathered my accumulated works and destroyed them. Oh, maybe I kept a few of the better ones. I had made up my mind that this six months was going to be strictly about learning and experimentation. There were piles of half-finished paintings showing every touch of goofballitis that hit me. Stuff was dripped, rollered, squeegeed and scraped. Paint was on discarded doors, chunks of Styrofoam, linoleum panels and hand towels. Some paintings attempted materials and techniques that found me incompetent. Other works had occasional modest glimmerings of goodness.

Letters ruth-robbins_illustration_a-wizard-of-earthsea
17

Ursula Kroeber was eleven years old in 1940 when she submitted a story for publication to Astounding Science Fiction magazine, and it was promptly rejected. Her parents, anthropologists at the University of California, Berkeley, had been taking Ursula and her siblings each summer to an old ranch in Napa Valley where Ursula read fantasy books, including Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows, Jungle Book, Worm Ouroboros and Alpha Ralpha Boulevard. “Wow!” she thought, “This stuff is so beautiful and so strange, and I want to do something like that.”

Letters pierre-auguste-renoir_children-reading
23

In a previous letter, I touched on the idea that your vocabulary might be responsible for personal happiness, effectiveness or creativity. Could it be possible that we are formed by the words we use? For example, might the elimination of the word “failure” promote “success?” Might the constant use of the word “happy,” make you so? You may see a few problems. We may know of folks who give lip service to “love,” while they practice “hate.” You might think that the program will not work if you think one thing and say another. But the idea behind the concept is that the words themselves are what you may become. Words maketh the man.

Letters andrew-wyeth_master-bedroom
10

Last night in Vancouver, a sparkly-eyed woman in a wide-brimmed hat introduced herself to me as an artist’s coach. “What kinds of problems do artists bring to you?” I asked.

She began with a gentle, meandering observation on the individuality and uniqueness of all artists, then described how many grapple with uncertainty when it’s time to grow. In all her years working in galleries, art advising and coaching, she has witnessed how creating an enjoyable artist’s life requires knowing why we make art in the first place.

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