Brotherhood & Sisterhood of Artists
Cedar Lee June 22nd, 2009
Robert Genn is a Canadian landscape painter who sends out a twice-weekly email newsletter to thousands of artists all around the world. He’s about 40 years older than me, so he has a lot of wisdom to rub off on me. His good attitudes about the practice of art and life in general have been such an inspiration to me since I subscribed to his letters a couple of years ago.
You can check out Robert Genn’s letters and subscribe to get them in your email at painterskeys.com.
In one of his recent letters, Robert Genn says, “Lone workers as we tend to be, the Twice-Weekly Letters may be simply a way to remind us we are not alone.” This observation got me thinking about how artists support each other and teach each other now in ways that weren’t possible before the Internet.
Another resource I like to tell people about is WetCanvas.com, the largest online discussion forum for artists. It’s a huge repository of information, and a great place to go to share with other artists about technique in every medium, art business practices, and anything you can think of that applies to artists. I spent a lot of time there a couple years ago. I’m not active on WetCanvas anymore, but occasionally I’ll go there when I have a question, and I always find answers.
Although Myspace has been in decline since Facebook became wildly popular this year, Myspace has allowed me to befriend many painters, sculptors, photographers, jewelers, potters, woodworkers, you name it, with staggering amounts of talent. The variety of incredible artwork to be found on Myspace will astound you–if you have time, go to my Myspace page, Myspace.com/CedarLee and browse through my friends list there. I’ve recently started meeting a lot of fellow artists on Facebook and Twitter too.
And there seems to be an infinite number of artists in the blogosphere–I’ve encountered so many amazing people by stumbling on their blogs or by them finding mine. There are simply too many artists out there freely sharing their work and their thoughts about art to ever keep up with.
Seeing all this creativity and the success of others definitely keeps me humble and inspired to be better. It’s good to know that for any problem I’m struggling with in my work or in my career, there are nice people out there who have experience and are generous with their time and knowledge if I get stuck.
At the same time, I get messages all the time from artists who watch my videos on YouTube or who came across my website and are looking for guidance. I remember how clueless I felt when I was just starting out, and knew little more than that I wanted to be an artist. It’s surprisingly fulfilling–gives me a warm fuzzy feeling–every time I’m able to help someone out who needs encouragement or just needs to be pointed in a direction.
Some of my online acquaintances have even led to real friendships in the real world!
I’m not sure where I’m going with all this, but I figured people who are not part of this worldwide community of online artists may not know how much we lean on each other, so I wanted to call attention to the “brotherhood and sisterhood of artists.” It’s one of the things I love most about my chosen profession.
I’ll never run out of things to learn and things to teach. The willingness of artists to connect with each other makes a lot of things possible.
