Large Reclining Nude, by Henri Matisse. Baltimore Museum of Art, Cone Collection When I first came to the east coast from California all those many years ago, there were two museums outside of New York City I was determined to see right away. The Barnes Foundation in Merion, Pennsylvania was at the top of the […]
Art
Tuttle Therapy
Richard Tuttle, artist and wisdom worker From time to time I have observed how protracted, focused work in the studio can leave me feeling a particular kind of tightness. It could be described as a slow motion contraction that has moved me away from that elemental sense of expansion and playfulness that should always be […]
From a High Small Place
Self Portrait with Masks, James Ensor It is easy for someone like me, who has been studying art for a lifetime, to convince myself that I have an accurate measure of the dimensions of a particular artist’s operative domain. But gratefully that conceit has not resulted in a callow disregard, and I love when my […]
- Art Making
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Go for Interesting
Howard Zinn Some of my favorite advice for living came through Howard Zinn by way of The Impossible Will Take a Little While, a collection of essays about and by people who did not give up even though the deck was stacked against them. To paraphrase the outspoken, truth-wielding Zinn, he says you have to […]
Only at Funerals, Weddings and Other Disasters: Maggi Hambling
(Photograph: Alicia Canter) Maggi Hambling, another sassy candidate for “ladette” along with Tracey Emin, is an English artist whose work I follow and whose approach to art and life is refreshingly direct. Here’s her kind of epigrammatic wit from a piece in the Guardian: Are you healthy? Early every morning, at least. I do a […]
The Circle is Never Perfect
I’m on my way to New York City for a weekend full of the best kind of distractions—a book reading of The Enthusiast by college chum Charlie Haas (a very funny and endearing book that both my partner David and I loved, something that doesn’t happen often), tea at Lady Mendl’s in Gramercy Park, the […]
Face Against the Glass
Arombell 1, 14 x 14″, mixed media on wood panel I’m heading into the final lap of this preparatory marathon. Postcards for my upcoming show go out this week, so my face is against the glass. (If you would like to be on my mailing list, send me an email with your snail mail address.) […]
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Gong Sounding
A few more thoughts gleaned from the Guggenheim show, The Third Mind. This show was as closely aligned to my view of artmaking as any other exhibit I’ve ever seen. The experience is still reverberating for me several days later. Here are some provocative words from two giants, John Cage and Philip Guston. We learned […]
Boland and Van Eyck
Domestic Interior The woman is as round as the new ring ambering her finger. The mirror weds her. She has long since been bedded. There is about it all a quiet search for attention, like the unexpected shine of a despised utensil. The oils, the varnishes, the cracked light, the worm of permanence–– all of […]
Picasso and the Ocular Rape
Pablo Picasso in his Cannes studio, 1965. Photograph: Arnold Newman/Getty Images Like many other artists (and many of them female), I take a detached and ironic stance with Picasso. There’s no arguing his impact on the trajectory of contemporary art. But thanks to the compelling book, Old Masters and Young Genuises by David W. Galenson, […]