Detail of a sumi brushstroke, ink on rice paper Twigs (excerpt) Neither music, fame, nor wealth, not even poetry itself, could provide consolation for life’s brevity, or the fact that King Lear is a mere eighty pages long and comes to an end… And so it has taken me all of sixty years to understand […]
- Aesthetics
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The Shape-Making Impulse
Yellow Porch, Richard Diebenkorn Today’s post is from the me with my head under the hood. Here are a few thoughts about what happens in the making and the molding. Sometimes that part of the process takes precedence, when it is helpful to step back a bit to see if you can see a larger […]
- Aesthetics
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The V Word
Ernesto Pujol (Photo: FIAF) Vulnerability, a meme that previously had little traction outside the world of self-help literature and 12 step programs, has gone mainstream. Brene Brown came at it straight on in a Tedx talk back in 2010. That speech went viral immediately and she became the “vulnerability expert” almost overnight. Brown’s contention is […]
Distraction Therapy
Bryan Cranston as LBJ in All the Way (Photo: Evgenia Eliseeva) With what is going on in Washington DC this week it is hard to stay on track with the work that matters to each of us, individually. How do you steer clear of the weeds with this latest caper? I don’t want to be […]
State of Paint
Joseph Montgomery at MassMOCA The provocations and ideas about the state of paint are plentiful in Jed Perl‘s recent essay in the New Republic, The Rectangular Canvas is Dead: Richard Diebenkorn and the problems of modern painting.* Using the occasion of the Richard Diebenkorn show, The Berkeley Years, 1953-1966 to unify his discussion (a show […]
Morpeth Contemporary
Thanks to many friends who joined me at the reception for my show at Morpeth Contemporary in Hopewell New Jersey on Saturday night. Hats off in particular to Ruth Morpeth and her crew for putting this work together with such a careful eye and thoughtful sense of the space. Comingling my paintings with Donna McCullough‘s […]
Into the Back Pages
Early morning in Small Point Maine I just returned from a long weekend in Small Point, Maine. This quiet outcropping surrounded by the Atlantic on three sides has been my favorite migratory site for many years. Annual visits here are like the kitchen wall where penciled lines mark a child’s growth. This landscape is my […]
- Aesthetics
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Lost in the Miasma (of a Nebulously Conceived Postindustrial Economy)
Characters from Mad Men The Sunday Times magazine’s lead article, What Was, Is and Will Be Popular, by the Times’ culture editor Adam Sternbergh, makes the case that it isn’t as easy to track popularity as it once was. Raised during a time when there was a simple one dimensional Top 40 list, I am […]
Morpeth Contemporary
Kadartha, 60 x 84″, mixed media on canvas, one of several large pieces that will be in the show at Morpeth Contemporary For any of you in and near New Jersey: A show of my new paintings will be on view from September 14 through October 12 at Morpeth Contemporary in Hopewell New Jersey. Ruth […]
- Aesthetics
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Third Acts and the Transrational
Diana Nyad arriving in Florida (Photo: REUTERS/Andrew Innerarity) I spent the past weekend quietly contemplating third acts, those moments when the extraordinary emerges from someone in their later years. Like Diana Nyad‘s momentous swim from Cuba to Florida—110 miles—at the age of 64. She became the first person to make that swim without a shark […]