Landsatting

Circular fields of green on the desert sands of Saudi Arabia, watered by pivot irrigation (Photo: Corbis) Landsat image of Southern Nebraska Field in Wadi-el-Watan, Egypt, imaged by a SPOT satellite. The circular pattern shows where a centre-pivot irrigation system has been used to water crops. Source : Spot Image Midwest from the air Midwest […]

The Jetty in Winter

Spiral Jetty (Photo: Greg Lindquist) Greg Lindquist, a Brooklyn based artist, made a winter’s pilgrimage to the Spiral Jetty on January 2, Robert Smithson’s birthday. His photos and “trip report” can be read on Hyperallergic. As readers of this blog already know, this is a frequent pilgrimage spot for me. Lindquist’s photos of the Jetty […]

Painting Well

“Rag and bone shop” table surface in my studio The New York Times Book Review last week had a simple headline: “Why Criticism Matters”. The editors set the stage by describing our current age as one where opinions are “offered instantly, effusively and in increasingly strident tones”—by anyone, anytime. So in that context it is […]

The Creaturely World

My partner Dave spends his waking hours advocating for a shift in thinking about how we can solve the biggest global problems, the ones that can be named in just a few words that everyone everywhere understands. Clean water. Health care. Housing. Safety of women and children. Human trafficking. On the topic of human trafficking, […]

So Chic After All These Years

‘Trees’ (1990-1991) by Joan Mitchell My good friend George Wingate sent me a heartening article from the Financial Times, In praise of older women, by Jackie Wullschlager. While I could be accused of being self serving to highlight it here given that I am both female and aging, it suggests a shift (a trend? a […]

Finding Round

Days begin and end in the dead of night. They are not shaped long, in the manner of things which lead to ends — arrow, road, a person’s life on earth. They are shaped round, in the manner of things eternal and stable — sun, world, God. –Jean Giono Western culture is grounded in linearity—of […]

Finding the Flow

Nietzsche was the one who did the job for me. At a certain moment in his life, the idea came to him of what he called “the love of your fate.” Whatever your fate is, whatever the hell happens, you say, “This is what I need.” It may look like a wreck, but go at […]

A New Nowhere

Voyager We’ve packed our bags, we’re set to fly no one knows where, the maps won’t do. We’re crossing the ocean’s nihilistic blue with an unborn infant’s opal eye. It has the clarity of earth and sky seen from a spacecraft, once removed, as through an amniotic lens, that groove- lessness of space, the last […]

Our Eyes and Ourselves

New work, “Snap 1” and “Snap 2” (diptych), in my studio before being shipped out this week Three critics at the New York Times were given the assignment of naming their favorite paintings in New York Museums. The lists can be found on the New York Times site, but as critic Roberta Smith freely confesses, […]