The Long Arc

The ever clever and often contrarian Malcolm Gladwell has a piece in this week’s New Yorker that brings a refreshing perspective to the old saw about artistic genius residing primarily in the young. As I’ve gotten older I’ve paid increasingly more attention to the creative breakthroughs that happen after 50. And it may surprise you […]

Tara Donovan

I’ve been a big fan of Tara Donovan for several years, and I am very excited to see her new show at the ICA in Boston this week. I bought the catalog for the show in anticipation, and it is excellent–authored by Nicholas Baume, Jen Mergel and Lawrence Weschler (LW is a particular personal favorite.) […]

Bellying Up

Do not quit. You see, the most constant state of an artist is uncertainty. You must face confusion, self-questioning, dilemma. Only amateurs are confident . . . be prepared to live with the fear of failure all your life. –William Ormond Mitchell The toughest patch of uncertainty in this artist’s life is usually those few […]

Pamela Farrell on Revealing

Lacuna 73, by Pamela Farrell (image courtesy of Pamela Farrell) I recently made contact with Pamela Farrell, an artist, blogger and psychotherapist. Her rich and lush paintings, mostly done in encaustic, caught my eye immediately. And it was through Pam that I was first introduced to another worthwhile art blog, Color Chunks. Here is a […]

Barbara Weir: Grass Seed Dreaming

Barbara Weir is one of my favorite painters. As an aboriginal artist, she approaches her work with a different set of expectations and intentions than is typical in the Western artistic canon. Like other women from her community (including now-deceased Minnie Pwerle, Barbara’s mother, and international art star Emily Kame Kngwarreye), her work is closely […]

Enough With the Words!

This short piece by Jonathan Jones (in The Guardian) captures rather succinctly many of the frustrations I have written about here in earlier posts. We are currently living through a period of inappropriate dependence on language to extol and explain what is often beyond language in the visual arts. Enough words! My voice joins others […]