ABOUT THE ART LETTERS

   Painting with words using experience as a palette could well describe'The Art Letters', a regular letter written by contemporary painter Neville Hickman to his grand-daughter Sade, an aspiring artist.'The Art Letters' are written as an ongoing series.

I hope that you will find them to be thought-provoking, stimulating and, at times, humorous.

Neville Hickman

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

"Art is art. Everything else is everything else'" Ad Reinhardt 1913 - 1967

"Writing about art is like balancing an unruly jellyfish on a piece of elastic."

"There you are, chasing a bright red hat in a windstorm and when you bend down to pick it up off it goes somewhere else. Suddenly a short piece of prose grows into a Ben Hur and you cannot get off the chariot. Writing about your own art is another matter entirely. Here you face a veritable minefield which you must cross wearing huge Mickey Mouse slippers. The whole process leaves you somewhat winded, a little apprehensive and yet at the same time strangely exhilarated."

Neville Hickman

---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

A note from the author:

"My letters to Sade have been written like I paint, by the seat of my pants without any experts breathing down my neck. An 'expert' to me is someone from out of town with a box full of slides. I would like to emphasize that the views in my letters are entirely my own and I hope that you will at times emphatically disagree with them. At the same time I hope that you never find them boring. In my letters I have by design avoided the intimidating and often hollow phraseology used by the 'Artspeak' pundits who boost the erroneous belief that one must be a regular little Plato in order to appreciate art. If through my letters I succeed in demystifying the creative process then I will be content."

Neville Hickman
Hermanus, Cape September, 1998