After spending the last five months figuring out this Social Media thing, getting set up on Facebook, finding an expert for smARTist Telesummit 2009, and encouraging artists to jump into this vast and ever expanding ocean, the predictably unpredictable world of all things online has thrown me, and you, not just a curve ball, but…
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Contrary to a commonly held notion, we artists do not suffer more than other people. There is so much unspeakable suffering in the world-from famine, war, and rampant disease-that many of us in the industrialized nations don’t even know the meaning of true suffering, including me. I’m not saying that artists don’t have it…
I’m so excited by what just happened on the First Day of smARTist 2009 that I simply have to share some of it with you.
The five panel members…
as far afield from each other as Molly Gordon in Seattle, Guillermo Cuellar in New England, Nancy Marmalejo and Lucia Cappacionne in Southern California, and artist Shirley Williams in Ontario, Canada…
…seemed to be flowing from an interconnected river of knowledge as they responded to the questions that came straight from this year’s smARTist participants.
I found the panel’s answers to be practical in their collective wisdom, that only when we…
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Last night as I was drifting into dreams the thought came to me that I am somehow searching for visual constants when I draw and paint from nature and from the works of other artists who came before me.
I spent eight days in a row drawing in the Rosicrucian Museum a few weeks ago, and found that on the last day or so…
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In an earlier post I talked about going back into unfinished drawings and paintings with an abstracted and loosened approach, and how that served as a good vehicle for my re-entry into the world of making pictures. I continue to work like this on these old drawings, and in the process I am slowly and subtly becoming aware of my developing visual memory.
I remember when I was an art student my teachers would often talk about visual memory. They told of how…
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It’s New Year’s Eve and I have a blog to write. My New Year’s Resolution in relation to this blog is to be honest; to speak from this very moment about what it is that occupies my thoughts. So, here’s my truth for Thursday, January 1, 2009.
I don’t feel like writing a blog today-December 31, 2008. I feel like letting my mind fly free, unfettered by any tasks at hand. I know, I know, I’ve been saying that a lot these past few blogs. ‘I need a break, I need a pause,’ all that. But the truth is…
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I just finished listening to an interview with Robert Storr, the current Dean of the Yale School of Art.
And I was struck, as I often am, by an academic’s perspective on being an artist. Which is not to say that Dean Storr is not part of the real art world. Far from it. He has extensive experience with curating (at the Museum of Modern Art, for one), exhibiting as a painter, he’s a respected art critic and a writer on the theory and practice of art.
The interview zeroed in on his plans for graduate and undergraduate students at Yale, yet I found that he had much to say that was…
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Pencils
This week I invite you to visit my studio. In my day-to-day life I am an organized person and like things to be evenly and purposefully arranged. I used to have that going on in my studio as well–at least more than I do now. Now…
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It is a necessary part of the ritual of completing circles to give thanks periodically, unreservedly, even for the dark times or the things we do not understand.
Today we anchor ourselves wholly in the attitude of appreciation. We see with the eyes of gratitude and let go of the insatiable hunger for more, directing our attention to all that has been given to us in abundance. And what we can give in return.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Excerpted from Chapter 8 of Living The Artist’s Life
Every living artist I’ve ever worked with, and every deceased artist I’ve ever studied, have all shared one simple trait: each of them has gone through varying levels of self-doubt; each of them, at different times in their lives, has questioned the worth of their talent.
No one that I know of has ever been exempt from this. For some, like the poet Sylvia Plath (who was also a talented illustrator), their spells of doubt and depression were mind-numbing, paralyzing, and, in the end, beyond their control.
For others, like Picasso, those spells were nothing more than…
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Patchwork Elephant
I’m just getting back into my studio after about a five-month interlude. I had laid aside my pencils and brushes and made my way back into…
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Ibis
I have been thinking about art that is made as an offering of beauty to be shared, in contrast to art that is made as an enticement to critics and consumers. These days it seems like we are coming at it from the wrong direction, regarding art mainly as…
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This careful, humble
attention
that’s required
to draw correctly
is fine-tuning my sight,
causing my vision
to become
wonderfully, enjoyably
receptive…
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Throughout history, groups of artists have played a role in the development of one another’s careers, in terms of support, inspiration, and in some cases dissipation.
La Toilette by Toulouse Lautrec
There was Degas’ group that gathered each summer in Brittany, which later gave rise to Gauguin’s group. There was Lautrec’s group that roved in and out of a variety of Montmartre cafes, and experimented with a variety of absinthes. There was Benton’s crowd on Martha’s Vineyard, the American Impressionists at Old Lyme, and…
Lascaux Cave - The Axial Gallery
No matter what they say about the cave paintings,
Why and how they were made,
One thing I know for sure from my own experience is…
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