Blog Archives
Q: Why do you sometimes depict the same subject matter twice?

“Trickster” (left) and “Sacrificial,” while the latter was in-progress
A: It is fascinating to play around with scale. For starters, it helps demonstrate how my pastel techniques and my approach to the subject matter are evolving. I’ve noticed that I always see and depict more details the second time around.
Typically, I prefer the second pastel painting over the first one depicting the same subject. Man Ray famously said:
“There is no progress in art, any more than there is progress in making love. There are simply different ways of doing it.”
I disagree with him. I am an optimist who believes that artists cannot help but improve over time. It’s one of the things that gets me into my studio: the idea that my creative process and my ways of using pastel are changing for the better. I like to think this represents some sort of creative progress. But still I sometimes have to wonder, is the idea of ‘progress’ just something artists tell ourselves in order to keep going?
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 549

Departing from Paro Airport in Bhutan
*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
… a lot of times you take a trip halfway around the world. You think the trip is for one thing… and you came away with something else. You change in a way you did not expect. These are the lessons that come well after school, college, training, apprenticeships. These lessons are not full courses; they are two sentences long. I felt I had gotten a degree in two minutes.
Anna Deavere Smith in Letters to a Young Artist: Straight-up Advice on Making a Life in the Arts – For Actors, Performers, Writers, and Artists of Every Kind
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 545

*an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
… in the pursuit of better behavior and moral action, we’ve cut ourselves off from instinct. But it’s gone too far. Today, we know that we’re in our heads too much. It’s not hard to see that something has been lost by placing so much of our attention into devices. Our overstimulated culture is a bird that feels like it has nowhere to land. Many people feel like, or operate as though, they’ve lost feeling for life.
Gary Bobroff in Carl Jung: Knowledge in a Nutshell
Comments are welcome!
Q: What makes you feel most alive?

A: Making art makes me feel alive, using all my gifts, my brain, my heart, and my hands to create something that never existed before and that can never be duplicated; knowing I’m the only person, ever, who could or would make this particular thing, as I strive to push my pastel techniques further each time out. Whether it’s a painting or a photograph, I enjoy making something from nothing… art that is well-crafted and has never been seen before.
Travel is the other activity that excites me. I thrive on adventure and I especially love new vistas. When I am in a country I have never visited before, with every step and around every bend there is something new to see. I am an explorer at heart!
Comments are welcome!
Q: How do you account for your intense compositions? (Question from Robin Plati via Facebook)

A: If I do say so, composition is something I’m known for. During the months I work on them, I devote many hours to looking at the painting on my easel and figuring out how to move the viewer’s eyes around in interesting ways. Everything you see is carefully worked out after hundreds of studio hours. Finished pastel paintings always have an inevitability about them. Change one detail and the entire composition is thrown off.
Comments are welcome!
Pearls from artists* # 504

* an ongoing series of quotations – mostly from artists, to artists – that offers wisdom, inspiration, and advice for the sometimes lonely road we are on.
… if a project doesn’t work out, you can always think of it as having been a worthwhile and constructive experiment. You can resist the seductions of grandiosity, blame, and shame. You can support other people in their creative efforts, acknowledge the truth that there’s plenty of room for everyone. You can measure your worth by your dedication to your path, not by your successes or failure. You can battle your demons (through therapy, recovery, prayer, or humility) instead of battling your gifts – in part by realizing that your demons were never the ones doing the work, anyhow. You can believe that you are neither a slave to inspiration nor its master, but something far more interesting – its partner – and that the two of you are working together toward something intriguing and worthwhile. You can live a long life, moving and doing really cool things the entire time. You might earn a living with your pursuits or you might not, but you can recognize that this is not really the point. And at the end of your days, you can thank creativity for having blessed you with a charmed, interesting, passionate existence.
Elizabeth Gilbert in Big Magic: Creative Living Beyond Fear
Comments are welcome!