Free Ride

Took the New York Free Water Taxi to IKEA last week. Splendid views, Swedish Meatballs and plebian photographs. I've amused myself, and hopefully you too, by fooling around with filters to see what I could salvage. Wasn't much there but these four caught my eye. I think they are too much sugar-substitute on the palate, but at least, the pixels were free.

Channeling Cole

The sky reminded me of the Hudson River School of American painters. These painters were devoted to an idealized portrayal of nature—a new garden of Eden. In this evening moment, tiny human beings and "nature" were coexisting peacefully. Even a digital camera to capture this pixelated manifestation of God. The Garden of Eden is on 14th Steet—really!

Jobs for Artists

The local pharmacy is doing it's bit. Obviously a representational painter — this is your brain on drugs.

Hot Color, Cool Observations

Ilana Manolson's recent show at Jason McCoy surprised me. At first glance I was prepared to dislike it, the super heated color and oily feel of the paint put me off. But the more I looked the more I was drawn in.

Realist elements combined with fields of color abstraction give a riotous picture of the chaos of nature. She seemed a keen observer of plant life and of the moment where things are in flux. As it turned out, she worked as a naturalist doing a long term condition assessment of 12-inch squares of grazing land.

She has interesting painting techniques as well. Layering paint then using spatulas and scrapers to pull up paint revealing highlights that feel internally illuminated. Try to see the show, these images do not convey what the paint reveals.

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.

Could I have that recipe please?

The latest Salvo in the Shepard Fairey Obama Hope Icon Wars, spotted on TechCrunch:

Start Mobile is having a problem with Apple. In a new app, Apple doesn’t like the way one piece of art depicts President Obama. Is it out of line or tasteless? I don't think so. It’s Shepard Fairey’s famous “HOPE” image.

Here’s the wording in the rejection:

Thank you for submitting Start Mobile Wallpaper Gallery to the App Store. We’ve reviewed Start Mobile Wallpaper Gallery and determined that we cannot post this version of your iPhone application to the App Store because it contains content that ridicules public figures and is in violation of Section 3.3.12 from the iPhone SDK Agreement which states:

“Applications must not contain any obscene, pornographic, offensive or defamatory content or materials of any kind (text, graphics, images, photographs, etc.), or other content or materials that in Apple’s reasonable judgment may be found objectionable by iPhone or iPod touch users.”

The artwork in question is now hanging in the National Portrait Gallery. As well, Fairey’s works are in the collections of the Museum of Modern Art in New York, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London.

I wish I had the recipe for Fairey's ability to stir up controversy.

Larry Rivers American-a

What better way to celebrate the fourth than with Larry Rivers? A quintessentially American painter who often painted historical themes. The current show at Tibor De Nagy has several sketches for the paintings, as a painter, it is always interesting to see how someone's process works.