Thinking of Home photo collage In speaking with a couple of artists about the difficulty of selling art in Quebec, I apparently used the word ‘Decorative’ to explain why one artist might sell more than others. I don’t remember using the word, I am aware that Quebec artists are sensitive to it, but if I...Read More

Adrift photo collage As a child, I wanted to be An Artist but I was very shy about showing people my art. I’d grudgingly come to accept what I was told, that ‘talent’ was obvious from birth and that if I found anything difficult to render, it meant I didn’t have any. If there was...Read More

Longing  photo collage In my role as a teacher of art techniques to adults, my beginner students often ask me why I object to their working from photographs, and my more advanced students ask me why I don’t let them begin a work from a photograph. My reasons are these: If students are beginners, they...Read More

Shut Up! Sut Up! photo collage I was asked, “What is art for?” and “How many citizens would actually complain if towns didn’t provide services for it, or if services were cut back?” During a discussion, the question arose as to whether governments should spend money providing free art or culture-related services to their communities...Read More

Caryatid photo collage I fear someone – whoever is making education system and social network decisions for us  – is secretly but systematically stealing the third dimension from our lives. We are gradually, ever so imperceptibly, being deprived of sight, the perceptive kind, the kind that comes of having a simultaneously tactile and visual understanding...Read More

Les trois graces photo collage Observations relative to the visual arts: –      A creative person is not necessarily ‘an artist’: ‘creative’ addresses any approach in any field that functions from new ideas, original outlook, inventiveness and risk-taking curiosity. If Plato really feared the unruliness of art, he would have discouraged insight and flashes of genius...Read More

Loving Touch  photo collage I recently listened to CBC Radio 1’s Giian Gomechi interview Alain de Botton, the author of a book entitled Art as Therapy (Phaidon) that is co-credited to John Armstrong. In the interview, Mr. De Botton argued that Visual Art, which some perceive is losing audiences in today’s world, owes society a...Read More

The Journey photo collage One of my favourite tasks as an artist who is also a curator of an art gallery is to visit artists’ studios. It’s complicated though, because it can also be the most difficult. I have to turn aside that part of my awareness where my own imagery and motivation lie to...Read More

The Gift photo collage Creative ideas can sometimes reveal themselves at any moment, as if by magic (which probably means they’ve taken shape subconsciously after an extended period of researching, planning and thinking). Their rendering into actual works in media, however, is usually a demanding and time-consuming process. Whether or not the ideas transform into...Read More

Ni vu ni connu photo collage             One of my aims  int his Blog is to address issues relative to the process of thinking as a professional artist. It’s a tough one, because many people have only a vague idea about it, believing that living by art is about ‘just’...Read More