Do You Know How to Collaborate?

People in the arts often find themselves wanting and needing to collaborate. These collaborations sometimes work beautifully and sometimes bring out the worst in the collaborators. It isn’t so easy when two or more individuals, each of whom has opinions, a vision, ego...

The Artist Statement

Today someone sent me a link to a website service where you can create a boilerplate artist statement in half-a-minute. You just pick a genre or two and words appear for you to copy. Say you pick “abstraction.” Here in part is what pops up: “By applying abstraction,...

Don’t Magnify Your Difficulties!

We cause our own distress if we magnify the difficulty of our tasks. Our tasks are already real: there is no need to magnify them. Our language should not make hills into mountains. Making mountains out of hills is a habit to avoid. Refusing to add incendiary language...

The Value of Patient Study

Van Gogh explained, “If we look at a Japanese artist, we see a man who is undoubtedly wise. What does he spend his time doing? Studying a single blade of grass.” It is rare for a busy artist, one who is trying to find time to create and also trying to deal with the...

Think Big!

Think Big! What would help you think big and see yourself mastering large projects and getting known in the world? Let’s take a look! Most people can’t answer the question, how can I think bigger about my art and my career? They don’t know what inner movement would...