Browsing: artists

Letters Vincent-van-Gogh_wheat-field-with-Crows_1890
25

I always like that scene in the movie The Jerk where Steve Martin leaves home saying, “that’s all I need…” He takes only a chair. Then he takes a lamp. He apparently doesn’t take a belt because out on the sidewalk his pants fall down. I think I identify with his situation because deep in my heart I know I can do quite well with less.

This time I left home without any art materials. I knew there was a box of old art materials in the closet of our friend’s home — enough to get started.

Letters brian-jungen_whale
21

Carefully curated images on social media of shiny children and food, vacations and relationships presented by regular breathing humans, are irking social scientists. Apparently, the suffocating display of a polished facsimile of human experience without evidence of the associated toil, rather than delivering the desired feeling of connection and love, is alienating us and giving us the blues.

When it comes to painting, we do expect a level of proficiency and an absence of mistakes. And to call it art, we look for magic. As humans, we may also need some sign of struggle to know we’re dealing with the real

Letters jack-hambleton_boats
16

If you’re going swimming, you’re better off if you swim with a friend. So goes the theory. Folks who get together and paint on Thursday mornings know what I’m talking about. There’s something to be said for collective consciousness, shared energy, or maybe just the joy of like-minded companionship.

Here’s a buddy system for studio-introverts or home-workers. You need a telephone friend who is in the same business, some music and a clock. Squeeze out and get all your stuff in order. Phone your friend and propose a time-frame. Two or three hours are good, or it can be until

Letters Robert-Henri_Edna-Smith-in-a-Japanese-Wrap
12

The most exciting thing about giving a workshop, I’ve found, is the kindling of ideas on how to do it better next time. Inspiration from other artists has informed my work and approaches. It’s easy to forget, working in our studios day after day, about the silent and knowing spirit that exists among lifelong learners.

The most endearing lesson I learned from taking a workshop is how much there is to learn. A wealth of skill and knowledge is out there in other artists who have been seasoned by their muses and, again, by other artists. Joseph Addison said, “What sculpture is to a block of marble, education is to a human soul.”

Letters natalie-goldberg_paris-moon
7

From the place where you leave your kayak to the foot of Opaekaa Falls there’s a forested walk of about half an hour. The trail winds between the medieval roots of giant koa and baobob. Black boulders have been tumbled here and there by an ancient eruption. Unseen akikiki call from the canopy, and red junglefowl scratch in the underbrush. On the path there are fellow-travellers coming back from the falls. Others, going the same way as I, linger, while yet others, perhaps more professional walkers, dash on by.

Letters helen-frankenthaler_mountains-and-sea_1962
14

Examine the work of an accomplished painter in any genre and you’ll likely witness the understanding and employment of flats. By this I mean those unsung, unapologetic saturations of colour without shine or impasto. Flats acknowledge the painting surface as a flat thing and at the same time enhance other features that give the painting its delicious illusion of depth. Good flats are technically difficult to execute — steady swatches of evenness must dodge the textural momentum of brush strokes in acrylic and oil. Most of the time, louder surface energy is the desired effect and it becomes the usual spotlight of the picture plane. But, oh, to be flat.

Letters owen-merton_snow-scene-long-island_1919
24

Just for today I’m going to try to make a better painting. We’re not talking Sistine Chapel here, just a piece of joy begun and ended between sunup and sundown.

Just for today I’ll be happy with it. As Abraham Lincoln said, “Most folks are as happy as they make up their minds to be.” Today I’m making up my mind to be pleased.

Just for today I’m trusting in luck, intuition, chance and happenstance. Today I’m going to fit myself and my work around some of these minor miracles.

Letters enchanted-owl
29

In the uppermost corner of Canada is the Inuit hamlet of Cape Dorset, nestled on its own tiny island at the southern tip of Baffin Island, on Hudson Bay. In the Inuktitut language it’s called Kinngait, or “high mountain,” where ancestors date to before 1000 BC. Originally a place of isolation — of drifting ice and nomadic hunting — for the last half-century Cape Dorset has been a place for art. With more artists per capita than anywhere else in Canada, drawing, printmaking and carving are the defining economic and identifying activities.

Letters hans-sebald-beham_genius
58

Questions these days seem to come in multiple editions. I have to tell you that this week artists are thinking about going into reproductions — Giclee prints in particular.

Giclees are multiple edition prints that are made on big sophisticated photocopiers. Over the past year the quality of these products has improved. For those who want to know something about the Giclee phenomenon — permanence, technicalities, costs, etc., we’ve prepared an overview at “Giclee printmaking for artists.” The question artists have to ask themselves is what they are going to do with the prints

Letters etsy_ldawning-scott
37

In my last years of high school, I made hand-painted cards and t-shirts to sell at the local craft fair. When I got to art school, I found I could support myself by selling t-shirts on my residence floor. Painted one at a time on my bed with supplies I’d brought from home, it was the most unsophisticated moneymaking scheme I could think of to pay for paint. While other students worked at the copy center or the college pub, I sat in my room with my t-shirts and eked out what my dad called, “the gift of poverty.” It was enough to get by and, like original art, impossible to scale.

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