Reblogged from Tallis Steelyard:

I suppose I can appreciate paintings as well as the next person of good taste. I’ve worked with enough painters to know their paintings have to be hung properly, (and after trying to arrange a display produced by a number of disparate artists, you begin to realise that some painters ought to be hanged properly as well.) Still they have their struggles to support themselves through their art just as I have mine. It is as well not to judge too harshly.

Yet there are painters who have made it to the top through their own efforts. In this context I’d mention Charlette Dillor. I know she gets mocked behind her back; mainly, I suspect, because she has kept the Woodpin village accent of her youth. If forced I can fall back on the street argot I learned as a child in the gutters of Port Naain, but the pressures of my calling meant I dropped that long ago and now, in mellifluous tones and with perfect diction, I read my work to admiring listeners.

The other problem which one discovers when one tries to assess Charlette’s work is that she is successful with the buying public. This always dooms the artist. When she bought a carriage, critics made snide comments along the lines that they hoped her horses could draw better than she could.

Yet she has been successful at a number of levels. Some of her success is due to talent, some to blind chance and some to her determination to succeed. I remember her when she was still a student. Courtesy insists that I do not mention at this point whether I was older or younger than her when we first met. Still she was doing promising work even then, but between ourselves it was somewhat wishy-washy. She seemed to work in pastel shades and the result was always muted and restrained.

Continue reading at Tallis Steelyard