Sincerely, Alex Katz
Dear Young Artist,
Painting is a social act and develops out of a community. Find your community.
Trust your intuition and taste. Taste is a moral code.
Understand art that you don’t “get.”
High art defines what we see. We see culturally. Seeing is a variable determined by that with which we are assaulted. A new vision and a new art should be the aspiration of high art.
Work as hard as you can to develop craft skills.
Read all you can and remember that by the time you’ve read it a large part of what you read is obsolete.
You have the audience you deserve. To enlarge or improve your audience requires all the energy you have. You get back what you put out.
If you fail, at least you should have learned something.
Good luck.
Sincerely,
Alex Katz