This is not the place to discuss questions of health, but perhaps it will not be thought grandmotherly to mention the extreme importance of nervous vitality in a fine draughtsman, and how this should be ordered on such healthy lines that he has at his command the maximum instead of the minimum of this faculty.

After a certain point, it is a question of vitality how far an artist is likely to go in art. Given two men of equal ability, the one leading a careless life and the other a healthy one, as far as a healthy one is possible to such a supersensitive creature as an artist, there can be no doubt as to the result. It is because there is still a lingering idea in the minds of many that an artist must lead a dissipated life or he is not really an artist, that one feels it necessary to mention the subject. This idea has evidently arisen from the inability of the average person to associate an un-conventional mode of life with anything but riotous dissipation.

A conventional life is not the only wholesome form of existence, and it is certainly a most unwholesome and deadening form to the artist; and neither is a dissipated life the only un-conventional one open to him. It is as well that the young student should know this, and be led early to take great care of that most valuable of studio properties, vigorous health.

From The Practice & Science of Drawing
by Harold Speed {British Painter, Teacher & Writer 1872-1957}

Tags: Fine Art, Harold Speed

So here is my first post of the New Year and a new decade. It’s a little bit overdue given that the subject is a personal round up of a few of my key {Pop} Cultural highlights of the ‘00s. Nevermind…. it’s been good to have a break from the computer and connect with the offline world for a bit.

Anyway, in compiling my {by no means exhaustive} list, I purposely tried to not over-think what to include. In each category I just put down the first contenders to occur to me, reasoning that they have continued to stand out and remain memorable in a pretty overcrowded media space. Please look through my choices and add your own favourites and comments. Don’t be shy; I know I have overlooked many brilliant and worthy items for inclusion. Read the rest of this entry »

Tags: Atonement, Birdsong, Books, Concept Feedback, Don't Make Me Think, Ian McEwan, Joshua Ferris, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, Sebastian Faulks, Steve Krug, The Kite Runner, Then We Came to the End