Monthly Archives: June 2016

Great Advice For Artists Thinking About Giving Up

Everyone has those days…you know the kind where you feel like it’s always a slog.  It’s a real temptation to give up.

EmptyEasel.com had a wonderful blog entry addressing just this feeling today, so I wanted to share it with you.

Great advice for artists thinking about giving up from EmptyEasel:
http://emptyeasel.com/…/advice-for-artists-thinking-about-…/

Happy Pride Day!

I couldn’t let Pride Day end without a HUGE kiss and shout-out to all my LGBTQIA family, friends, and students. Like this wonderful Balthus painting, The Mediterranean Cat, may you enjoy many tasty happy rainbows!

Artists Unionize in Britain. WootWoot!

A union for artists… Now THAT’S what I’m talking about!

The US film and music industry have a union, and I know that it has helped those creatives make a better life for themselves and have safer working conditions too. My sister-in-law who works as a script supervisor in Hollywood really sings the union’s praises. And I listen.

Why would fine artists who are independent entrepreneurs want a union? How about if we had a union in the US, we could negotiate insurance premiums as a big group for better rates. We could enforce fair trade practices like getting paid by galleries within 90 days of sale.

I’ve been super fortunate to have been with gallerists who were honest, but not everyone has had the same experience. I personally know several artists who’ve had their work stolen, damaged, and sold but never saw a single penny for their art. The clout of a union and it’s legal department could help artists fight for their rights.

Read about the Union here: http://artforum.com/news/id=60754

The photo of the unionists is from the Artforum article linked above. I looked for a photo credit but didn’t find one.Anyone know who the photographer is?

 

The End of The Spring Term

And so, we come to the end of the Spring term!

What a great bunch of artists I worked with in all my classes! Such an honor to mentor young artists. Today I take my hats off to a wonderful painting class.

THANK YOU especially to Seattle Art Museum for giving my students free entry to the permanent collection so we could study color schemes and techniques.

Here are my favorites from this last critique, even though it’s hard to pick– I love seeing how the museum’s treasures inform the works!

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Thank you Seattle Art Museum!

THANK YOU to Seattle Art Museum for giving my students free entry to the Graphic Master’s Exhibit.

The exhibit is worth many, many visits! I’m still a little shaky from being so close to ALL the Capricios by Goya and so many others by Rembrandt, Hogarth, Durer, Picasso and even Crumb!

Here are my favorite student responses to the museum visit. The best of them made personal connections to the artworks and created true artistic dialogues with the works on loan and those in our permanent collection.

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FullSizeRender copySuch a joy to see!

Nice kitty kitty kitty!

And the magpie says…”Nice kitty kitty kitty, Good kitty kitty kitty.”
Or maybe like Ripley in Alien, “Lucky, lucky, lucky.”
Goya’s portrait of young Don Manuel Osorio Manrique de Zuniga always cracks me up.
Look at those cats!!!
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