I expose myself

Today I expose myself. I have been taking pieces of earlier paintings and exploring them inside my current work. It started with a chance remark by Cora Cohen, who questioned my landscape/truck paintings as being too cinematic. It got me thinking about earlier landscape painters. I decided to follow a time honored painterly tradition of repainting others work in the service of one's own. Here are some examples: Chardin followed by Soutine, Manet followed by Mark Ryden, Jan Davidz de Heem followed by Matisse, Cezanne followed by Susan Shaw, Albert Marquet followed by Susan Shaw. The most terrifying thing for me was to realize that I had turned Cezanne's beautiful late afternoon stormy landscape onto a post-industrial slag heap.

Joyous Day!!!!

I am the happy recipient of a glorious painting by Cora Cohen and it's arriving today. It's called Green Drips but drippy it is not. It is a glorious enmeshing of color and brushwork and as Cora would say, "...full of air." And you know what? I'm walking on that air!!!

You like who you like.

Another summer exhibition definitely worth seeing is "Trees" at DC Moore. Group shows are fun because it's like picking your favorite things from a menu. Studying the same subject repeated also gives one insight into the thought processes of making art. I find I am always drawn to the same artists, not surprisingly in this show what caught my eye were Whitfield Lovell, Fairfield Porter and Lois Dodd.

In my own practice, Cora Cohen has been after me to paint less and more abstractly. I don't think I've been able to internalize what she's been saying but I recognized it immediately in the Lois Dodd below. It's one of those paintings you wish you had painted yourself.

David Bates was the big surprise. His garish pop color landscape caught my eye because in spite of the limited colors and graphic rendering, it had a tremendous sense of place. I was sure I was looking at a swamp in or near Louisiana, not only from the cypress knees but the harshness of the light and the black of the water. Swamp water— tannin stained with the droppings from bald cypress and tupelo gum — calls me. When I inquired about the artist, the gallery said he loves to fish and hails from East Texas. I'm sure he's fished in the "Sportsman"s Paradise" of Louisiana.

Snippets Samplings Static—the Opening

If you missed the opening, there's still time to sample it. The show doesn't close until April 10. Besides if you don't see it, how will you be able to answer Cora's question, "With the end of modernity and the loss of absolute ideals, faced with a sense of fluctuating values, instability, in a context of incessant questioning, reconsideration, how do artists make work?"

I ask myself that every day....
Ernest Rubenstein Gallery, 197 East Broadway, NYC on the Lower East Side!

Snippets Samplings Static — Opens

All I can say was it was a great opening. So many people to talk with I didn't take any snaps, make any movies or anything else. Luckily Kurt took a souvenir photo.

Snippets Samplings Static — You're Invited!

I'm thrilled to be in the group show, "Snippets Samplings Static " curated by Cora Cohen. Opening this Sunday 3-5 at the Educational Alliance's Ernest Rubenstein Gallery. Artists are: Billy Copley, Jason Duval, Andrew Guenther, Jac Lahav, Max Razdow, James Rosenthal, Susan Shaw, Jo-Jo Sherrow, Ana Wolovick, Haeri Yoo. I've seen and admired many of their artworks when I've seen the work in the gallery circuit. One of the best things about the show from my point of view is getting to meet the other artists. Every time you are in a show like this, you expand your own network of people who never mind talking about art. It's also great to see your own posse, those wonderful people who encourage and support your work. Here's a little taste of the artists, not necessarily the work you'll see in the show, but works I really like. Hope to see you Sunday, resplendent in your best posse get up. After all, my work is evolving and even "Charles Darwin has a posse." And for your further enjoyment, after the images, there's a video of Jac Lahav in action, shot and edited by JP Coakley.

...and Calvert says, "We don't get no respect!"

Well...it was really Rodney Dangerfield. But in what I've now discovered to be a much longer running dialogue with the US government, Calvert Vaux stated his view of artists and their work in an 1852 article in The Horticulturalist, " that it was time the government should recognize and support the arts." Calvert Vaux was an architect and landscape designer. He is remembered as the co-designer (with Olmsted) of NYC's Central Park. Another project of Vaux's which I adore is Olana, Frederic Church's house, upstate along the Hudson River. Church was a member of the Hudson River School of painters along with Thomas Cole. Church's paintings abound here in the city including the New-York Historical Society and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.

"The next conversation I have with President Obama is to beg for a secretary of arts," Quincy Jones said in a recent radio interview. He wants the new prez to create a cabinet level post. I'd have to agree with him. Maybe we'd finally get some respect!

Artists, art and politics aside, I'm always amused by six degrees of quirky. I listen to Jones' jazz when I paint along with Eric Dolphy and Miles Davis. The image above is one of Church's iceberg paintings — a subject that floats me. I also LOVE the iceberg paintings of Gregory Amenoff, who moved out of his studio on the westside of NYC, where it was next occupied by abstract artist, Cora Cohen, who is curating a show I'm going to be in, opening March 8 (more on this later) entitled, "Snippets Samplings Static." I also painted icebergs for a while, while I dreamed of going to Antarctica.