Sargy Mann, blind painter Here’s a story I have never encountered before. Sargy Mann spends 25 years as a painter and ends up losing his sight. But he decides to keep painting. From an article about Mann by Tim Adams in the Guardian: “After a bit I thought: ‘Well here goes,’ and loaded a brush […]
Seeing and looking
Mind and Eye
If the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind. Richard Rorty, from Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature What a provocative quote from the philosophical giant himself, and one that I have been pondering all day after spending some time on Mind Lab, a beautifully constructed site […]
Seeing and Looking
Bridget Riley Bridget Riley describes her mother thus: “She was always pointing out colours: in the sea; the sparkle of dew: changes of colour when the dew was brushed away. If she arranged anything on the table like a bowl of fruit […] she would point out the colours. ‘Look it’s almost got a blue […]
Seeing is an Inside Job
Rothko Chapel, Houston The truly great ones are fresh continuously, repeatedly. Like a painting you can sit in front of for hours and never fully grasp. When I was just beginning to study art, I asked my professor about Mark Rothko. He and de Kooning were the giants of the generation of artists who inspired […]
The Wince Factor
The New York Times’ architectural critic Nicolai Ouroussoff captured it all in the title of his review: The Chanel Pavilion: Clear folly in lean times. Look how quickly everything in our lives has shifted. In just a matter of weeks, the vox populi has traded its old laissez-faire lens for a sharp edged one, one […]
Phenomenal Presence: Robert Irwin
Robert Irwin The books stacked by my bed may appear to be pliantly passive, but don’t be fooled: the daily jostling that rotates one to the top spot is a highly competitive challenge. Feelings have been hurt, I can sense it, when that slim volume of finely chiseled poetry gets usurped by, dare I say […]
Clearing the Decks
During a time when I am still sitting in the silence—in the thinking and feeling rather than the doing, making, manifesting—my thoughts have been drawn to examples of significant disruptions in the flow of artistic output. Not just my own, but others. Probably the standout example from the recent past that is pointed to most […]
Luc Tuymans
Luc Tuymans’ paintings have an atmosphere all their own. They stand out whenever I have seen them on display, with that signatory diluted palette and the painterly, brushstroked surface. His content is usually identifiable and yet the paintings have a mystery to them that makes them feel more aligned to non-representational work. Although much younger […]
Being Schooled
Silence and solitude, as great teachers have always advised, open us up to new layers of consciousness. This week the layer I have been in features a cast of animals, each bringing its own meaning and significance. A few days ago I opened the door of my studio and was overwhelmed by the smell of […]
Compassionless White
More from David Batchelor’s Chromophobia: In the chapter titled “Whitescapes”, Batchelor describes going to a party at the home of an art collector in London. His description of that experience is hauntingly familiar to me, but one that I have never thought through in such explicit detail: The house looked ordinary enough from the outside: […]