Dear Mark,
We’re at the beginning of a dramatic market downturn. What observations and advice do you have for artists in a time like this?

Dear Artist in a time like this,
Clean your brushes. I mean that literally as well as metaphorically. I don’t like seeing people lose their jobs and I’m worried that more joblessness will lead to more crime, but so far, for me, the downturn has been a blessing in disguise. It’s clean up time. I, like most everyone else, have decided to cut back on expenses. I laid off four employees. Also, throughout this past year, four of my employees found other work and I decided not to replace them anytime soon. I went from a staff of 24 to 16. (I heard Jeff Koons laid off 15 people.) Then I checked to see if I could reduce my art supply bill. Producing 1,000 paintings a year, I am the biggest client at New York’s flagship Utrecht store on 4th Avenue. I discovered that my bill automatically went down dramatically because some of the people who I laid off were the ones who were burning through their brushes by not cleaning them properly. We artists know how expensive good brushes are.