Thank you to everyone who joined in at the opening reception of my show, “The Light Within”, at Brooklyn Workshop Gallery last Thursday, September 17. The paintings were beautifully echoed in the ceramic work by Amani Ansari. It was a great night. Special thanks to the amazing BWG team—Martine Bisagni, Amani Ansari and Iviva Olenick, […]
Art
Essential Unknowability
Ghostly: ‘Untitled’, 1977, is on show in Agnes Martin’s Tate Modern retrospective Photo: Agnes Martin / Artists Rights Society Some would say there has been enough written about Agnes Martin to last us for a while. Her show at the Tate Modern (up through October 11) has produced many reviews, plus two new books about […]
Art as a Well Planned Crime
One corner in my new show, “The Light Within”, at Brooklyn Workshop Gallery (September 5 – October 11.) The combination of metallic surfaces on the series to the right (“Silma 1-4”) and the chalky intensity of “Kannakam” on the gorgeously textured wall on the left pleases my eye. How to talk about the visual without […]
The Terroir-Driven Life
Mosel, the German valley most associated with Riesling wines (Photo: Friedrich Petersdorff) I’ve been laboring to write about (mostly) art making and creativity on this blog for almost 10 years. One of the overarching themes has been the search for language that comes in close, authentically, to the experiences I have when I am in […]
Pitch Perfect
Agnes Martin (Photo: Mildred Tolbert) From the newly released Agnes Martin: Her Life and Art, by Nancy Princenthal: Martin’s mature paintings (she destroyed most of her early work) are incontrovertibly right, in the sense that they convince us that not a single preliminary decision or incident of execution could have been changed without damage. Composed […]
Behind, Beyond, Beneath: Scaling the Continuum
A few installation shots from my recent show at the Morris Graves Museum in Eureka California, Behind, Beyond, Beneath: Scaling the Continuum. At the opening event on Saturday night, over 800 people came through the museum. I met some extraordinary people and had a terrific evening. Special thanks: A stellar team and museum staff—Jemima Harr, […]
Evocative Objects
‘Ghost Dance Dress’: Southern Arapaho artist, Oklahoma, circa 1890 (Photo: Joshua Ferdinand) The best way I know of dealing with the scale and scope of the Metropolitan Museum is to walk through and let the objects find you. Art critic Michael Kimmelman did his own version of the “evocation stroll” in the company of numerous […]
The Sweet Unheard
Of all the poets who delve into writing, creativity and the nature of art making, Jane Hirshfield is the closest to my way of seeing things. I go back to her books over and over again. Now another to add to my library: Hiddenness, Uncertainty, Surprise: Three Generative Energies of Poetry. These three essays were […]
Upcoming Show in California
My new exhibit, Behind, Beyond, Beneath: Scaling the Continuum will open April 25 at the Morris Graves Museum of Art in Eureka California. The show features paintings from a variety of series that I have worked on over the last five years but held together by an ongoing exploration into the “micro to macro” span […]
- Aesthetics
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Painting with your Guts
Claerwen James (Photo: London Evening Standard) Every artist has a personal story of how she ended up spending a lifetime doing this thing that is all-consuming. It’s a strange decision really, that willingness to give yourself over to a passion that takes hold as soon as you awake and stays resident, in background or foreground, […]