It Comes From Within.

Just a few words on the topic of “art.”
While I was at the mega-bookstore drinking my second Grande Americano, they announced over the P.A. that the painter Robert Bateman would be doing a book-signing a few minutes hence. So I set aside Bulgakov’s The Master And Margarita and sauntered on over to the fireplace area, where at least fifty people were already gathered.
Robert Bateman is an internationally known artist who specializes in near-lifelike nature paintings. Think Audobon, but quite a bit better! I own a Bateman print of a gorgeous lynx surrounded by icicles and winter. It’s absolutely beautiful stuff. So lifelike you’d swear it was breathing. The lynx is crouching in the snow and his eyes are half closed. This painting is over my bed, and sometimes when I’m not quite tired enough to go to sleep, I just look at the thing… and it does the trick.
It is so effective that there are times I will fall right on the floor even. Lights out!
Now that’s a painting!
Mr. Bateman began with a little lecture [he finds dead birds and then freezes them stretched out in different positions so that he can study them, their feather structure etc.]
Artists are such psychos! I love it.
And then he had a question period. One woman asked him if he would ever be writing a book on the technique of painting. His answer really blew me away…
Bateman said “I don’t know anything about technique.” Then, amid the sound of about fifty-one people chuckling over that, he backed up and explained how he uses certain paints etc. etc., but he concluded by saying that he’s never been one to advocate “courses” in painting. He said, “if it’s not in here [tapping on his chest] it won’t be on the canvas.”