"I DEDICATE MY ART TO UNICEF.  Prints of my paintings are available.  If you want to purchase some (contact me by e-mail), the money will be donated to help the children of the world."

What a wonderful gesture and exemplary action, Anneke!  Literally giving away the actual value of sales of your own beautiful and precious works of art – personal creations that often become the raison d’etre for so many of us “struggling [would-be] artists.”  Many of us choose to spend our time, our energy, our talents, AND our money – spending and dedicating virtually our whole lives to making works of art!

Yet you, Anneke choose to spend the money your art earns for you toward the enormous task of enhancing life's conditions -- thus, the health, intelligence, education, happiness, and personalities of the many, many of our world's children who are so in need, of money, yes, but also of LOVE.  And LOVE certainly is what I read, what I FEEL, in your statement, your contribution of yourself, Anneke.  May it be infectious!

Consequently, I am beginning now to make a similar charitable gesture, and because I don't attract very much money from art, I most-likely also will be adding some multiple of it  -- not that I have extra money to give away, but because I KNOW OF NO BETTER, INVESTMENT WITH SURER LONG-TERM RETURNS!   Invaluable returns, to me, to all of us, and to our wonderful world with all its natural beauty, its natural resources, and its varied wildlife.   For what can be better for ourselves, for our country, for the world, than sharing our individual profits and products to help promote the health of the world and many of its people’s education, beauty, and freedoms from such universal human needs as money can buy, as well, of course, as demonstrations to the needy ones that other people -- MANY people! – that is, WE, as individual human beings, DO VALUE OTHER PEOPLE AND OUR WORLD with all its varied living things and natural wonders, including mountains and valleys and streams and oceans.  AND TO SHOW ALL PEOPLE THAT WE CARE – that we CARE about the well-being and the lives of every living thing and care about preserving and recreating the beauty of our earth’s environment for everyone to live in, to work and to play (all of which include the making of art). 

I think that successfully practicing those two activities – to SHARE and to CARE –  with and about other individuals, especially those in need, and all of our earth itself and other living beings as needs be, fittingly describe how you, Ms Anneke Hut modestly spend your life.  From your own works of art and from the many helpful comments and encouraging words to your colleagues, and other writings, I feel confidently assured of your values and their practice.  (Take for instance your description of those whom you consider to be friends of yours – brief, sensitive, simple, and sensible.  I know of no-one more loving, more loving of fun, more loving of practicing kindness to all creatures and the earth itself, and all beauty.  And more, I am sure.  In short, you practice habitually those two qualities that I stress above:  quite simply SHARING and CARING.  Quite simply, what else is love?

Bruce Combs