Letter to a Young Artist

 I  was spent a day with a friend  recently and we were discussing dreams, shamans, spirits and art. That night out of the blue I went to my book case and pulled out a book  called Dreamtime and Inner Space: The World of the Shaman. I hadn't looked at it probably since college.  Out dropped this letter from my former college professor and artist, Bob Watts.

 I don't remember giving him my journal but I do remember the journal being full of insecurity and doubts.  I also don't remember receiving this note from him but I love what he says:

 " I could help you realize that all or most sensitive artists struggle with the same problems, the fears, anxieties, frustrations of creating. It often takes many years to arrive at some confidence. Its a giving up of some values which have nothing to do with making or being. Our inner self knows this for a certainty. Have you read Zen and the Art of Archery? There are clues there."

It seems so right to have this letter right now for myself as an artist and a teacher.  The fact that it dropped out of this particular book is ironic. From dream time, inner space and from the after life, Bob is  still communicating.

Thanks, Doctor Bob

Robert Watts (artist) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Robert Watts was an American artist best known for his work as a member of the international Avant-garde art movement Fluxus. Born in Burlington, Iowa June 14th 1923[2][3], he became Professor of Art at Douglass College, Rutgers University, New Jersey in 1953, a post he kept until 1984. In the 1950s, he was in close contact with other teachers at Rutgers including Allan Kaprow, Geoffrey Hendricks and Roy Lichtenstein. This has led some critics to claim that pop art and conceptual art began at Rutgers [4][5].

He organised the proto-fluxus Yam Festival, May 1963 with George Brecht, and was one of the main protagonists, along with George Maciunas, in turning SoHo, New York, into an artist's quarter. He died Friday 2nd September 1988 of lung cancer in Martins Creek, Pennsylvania.[6]

He was also known as Bob Watts or Doctor Bob.