It is funny how one can see the small coincidences in life and realize that there Valley View
oil painting
8 x 10 inches are greater forces at work. The timing of your letter about A.C. Leighton and his ideals struck a chord with me, many of his thoughts and ideas about painting I myself subscribe to. The graying down of colors to show off more pure ones. The constant study. I always tell my students to constantly study and that they are only as good as their worst painting. I myself have burned my share of bad works. And the biggest coincidence is that a prominent northwest gallery will soon be sponsoring my trip out to the northwest to gather reference material for a show that I will be having there. They want me to paint Yellowstone, and all week I have seen specials on TV about... you guessed it, Yellowstone. Coincidence, or is there more to it?

Mr. Leighton, as you describe him and as is seen in the literature, is not so much a rugged individualist as he is a rugged conformer to the standards then prevalent in England. He apparently brought these standards west and inflicted them on the wild Canadian landscape. While his watercolours, particularly, are of note for their looseness and brevity, the western landscape required an even bolder approach than he was able to give. One must not confuse "high" standards, with "rigid" standards.

I recently was a part of a three-day show held in our area. The show was presented Feeding the Lake
oil painting
30 x 36 inches by a small Art Association and, as per its charter, encouraged new young and old artists to show and sell their work. At the risk of being found superior, I think your quotations from A.C. Leighton would be and should be the basis for all Art Associations. I personally think that in the development of an artist one should learn to recognize when one's own work is really exposing one's soul to the world. Then the artist should rush to present their work to the world. Should members of the public feel in reaction something in their own soul, then they need to pay a fair price. But the selling of a painting should never be the prime reason for painting in the first place.

Since reading The Painter's Keys I have shuffled my art in several piles:
William Panzer's motorhome/studio

Pile One: Works of merit. These are about sixty paintings that I am going to take to Taos... either will start a gallery there for the summer or maybe just stop on the side of the road in Truchias or some other beautiful spot. From there I plan to go to San Miguel de Allende for the fall months and do a couple of shows. Also, I will use some of these paintings to apply to do a two month show in Scottsdale in early 2008.

Pile Two: Works that need completion.

Pile Three: Works that need to be gessoed over.

Pile Four: Supports, Canvases, Panels that need to become new creations.

I am now going to load all of Pile One and several from the other piles and head out on an odyssey. I am subletting my Houston studio and will spend ten months in my Motorhome/ Studio.

I'm 51 and have worked for 30 years in a non-creative atmosphere in a non-creative, testosterone heavy industry (construction), hesitant to let my "girlie, creative" side out – until recently. The response to my pumpkin carvings the last few years have been phenomenal. The response to my woodcarvings, turnings and photography is very positive, while the watercolors have been admired by many. That's all nice, but I get a bigger kick of just knowing that I can do it and that I will never run out of things to create and improve on. But what I want to confess is the more than a little tingle of excitement that occurs when I experience the flow of creative energy when in a class, workshop, or studio situation. I'm 6'1" and a big-boned, big-muscled 260 lb, but tender-hearted guy. I'm amazed at the feeling of being "crisply" alive and just out-and-out giddy. I go about my painting with a sense of childlike fun and amazement! It also doesn't hurt that I'm usually the only male and that many of the ladies seem to be fascinated with a big, crusty, grey-haired, 51 year old man doing the painting thing. It really adds to my already big ego.

After reading the previous clickback, The mating game , it seems to me that your readers need a good dose of Carl Jung. He believed that women's creativity was often invested in her man, and until she could claim that creativity as her own, she would not be able to paint, sculpt or whatever. Happened to me. Sigmund Freud went out of style decades ago; Jung had it right. The whole idea that women paint to attract a mate is ridiculous in the first place – we paint because we want to, need to, just like any man does. I doubt many women were consulted before Geoffrey Miller wrote his opus – it is nonsense to state that the mating game is what motivates painters. You know better than that, Robert.

Your letter on The Mating Game made me smile with delight--you're Maine Morning
watercolor pencil painting right on the money! My love is quite taken with my creative pheromones... and it works both ways. I've done some figure drawings of him that I find wonderfully pleasing--not because my work is perfect, but because I captured something of his essence, the way his thigh turns gracefully from the hip, the long line of the spine, the vulnerable back of the knee, the broad shoulders, the back of the neck. Yes, art and the mating game... what a matchmaker!

In the great game of "having a show," we display our paintings on the walls of our stage, White's Point
oil painting
11 x 14 inches whether it's an upscale gallery, an edgy downtown space or a humble outdoor booth show. Surrounded by our finished work, the artist enters, stage right. The audience mills around, surveying the work with one eye while waiting for the actor/artist to make their move. Will the artist quail under pressure, modestly playing the part of shrinking violet? Or will the artist come alive in the spotlight, knowing that these moments are few and far between? Sure, the work should speak for itself, but for this one moment in time, we can dazzle. How could we resist?

I found it interesting to read the Mating Game clickback.
Peter Brown's Grasshopper Eye viewing device Your correspondents should consider that there are many varieties of creativity--many arts and many occupations that require creative intelligence. Attractive, even sexy creativity is in no way limited to the visual arts, nor even to other obvious creative activities, such as music, writing and dance. There are also surgeons and plumbers, teachers and librarians. I have always thought that it's much more important what a person is than what a person does. Creative energy underlies all positive forms of human endeavor. There are many artists in this world who do not make tracks. Look for a creative attitude and forget the predetermined portfolio.

Regarding your recent letter on squinting, I include an image of my Grasshopper Eye viewing device. I am guessing that it is more than 20 years old. It has great predictive applications for adding a new color to a work-in-progress when used with a color swatch. It has been a mainstay of my painting workshops and critiques.

As you know, we are all growing mentally and physically and changing all the time as we learn what life is trying to tell us. I'm 22 and in my studies I read about different schools of art and about different artists with various opinions about life and art. Is there a relation between a human being's stages of growth, growing mentally and emotionally, and schools of art? In other words, is art growing while our thoughts grow and, if it is true, why those great artists of the past couldn't agree with new opinions about art?

(RG note) Thanks, Nazanin. The idea that different schools of art might parallel the development of a child, just as a fetus goes through various stages of animal evolution as it develops, is possible, but not likely. A child's drawing ability, for example, leaves the automatic, atavistic stage very early on, and falls rather into learned, acculturated expressions and peer expectations. If there was some way of isolating an individual child from her society, there might be a discernable parallel. Schools of art and art movements are rather like hemlines, they rise and fall in fickle and inexplicable manners.

The Canadian Pacific Railway also hired another English Artist to document Woodenhead Park
pen and ink through paintings. She passed through Revelstoke B.C. and travelled to Vancouver, painting. She later returned to Revelstoke where she lived out her life and returned to England to live out her last year. When in Revelstoke, she started up the Revelstoke Art Group in 1949. This group is still together & growing. She also gave lessons to many students, in her studio where she lived in a bording house. Her name was Sophia Atkinson. We are forever grateful to her for bringing art to Revelstoke.