Blog

If you’re working on a creative project and you skip it for a few days, you may end up losing not only days but weeks, months and even years. It’s easy not to return to a creative project when we put it aside and lose contact with it. The solution? Pick a number of...

Say that you fail to make a sale that you thought was going to happen or get rejected by a gallery where you really wanted to show. There’s a particular tactic you can employ to put this unfortunate (but not uncommon) incident behind you. That’s to “get a grip on your...

What has helped me a lot over the years is moving from the idea of discipline to the idea of devotion. Pavarotti once said, “People say that I’m disciplined but it’s not discipline, it’s devotion, and there’s a big difference.” There is! I discovered that I couldn’t...

Summer is upon us! Here are ten inspirational quotes for this sultry season: 1. "I have gone into roses and have over a thousand planted. There is nothing like making pictures with real things."-- Mary Cassatt 2. "Wherever I go I need a period of incubation so that I...

Here are the thoughts of one artist raised in Europe and living in Asia about her experience of culture. Ingrid explained: "I have been living in cultures other than my own for the last ten years, in Canada, in Europe and now in Asia. Living in Singapore and creating...

Last week I chatted about the very mixed experiences that artists often have when they attend juried shows, trade shows, or art conventions and see excellent work that can cause them to doubt their own efforts and abilities. What ought an artist to do in such...

If you’re an artist, you may sometimes find yourself in one of the following situations. Maybe you enter a juried competition, one of your paintings is accepted for the competition, and, although you discover that you haven’t won a coveted ribbon, you nevertheless...

Family life, the creative life, and just plain human life all present their challenges. Do they ever! Today I wanted to invite you to take a look at my new book, Overcoming Your Difficult Family, which can help you a lot with the challenges that come with family life:...

Creating depends on you having a mind quiet enough to allow ideas to bubble up. Your emotional health also depends on your ability to get and keep a grip on your mind: on your ability to extinguish negative self-talk, foster productive obsessions while minimizing...

As we discuss anxiety and anxiety management, we also want to take a look at the thing commonly called “mania.” Mania can hit anyone, since it can be induced by street drugs and by other causes as well as by the dynamics of one’s own racing, needy brain. But I want to...