Matisse, Giotto and the Religious Imagination

Giotto fresco in Padua Another excerpt from Out of Eden by DiPiero. This one is from the essay, Matisse’s Broken Circle, and is particularly interesting in its reference to Matisse’s concept of the religious imagination and his emulation of Giotto. I am compelled by DiPiero’s claim that Matisse’s career was “the most sustained and variegated […]

Painting the Facelessness

Another passage of interest from W. S. Piero’s Out of Eden: Why are the jets and emulsive tracks of paints in Pollock’s Lavender Mist: Number 1, 1950 so compelling? It’s not only because he was creating a greater plasticity of space and laying out dozens of contested fields of formal activity where disintegrating patterns pitch […]

Off Road

I am back from Utah for just two days and then back off the grid again. Tomorrow I am driving 9 hours to Chautauqua New York, transporting 6 paintings for a show at the Chautauqua Institution. I’ll be back for one day and then heading west, to California and to Utah again. My mother fainted […]