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 […]
Art
- Aesthetics
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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.) […]
The Curator’s Touch
Curator extraordinaire Kate Fleming with my daughter Kellin at a previous show at the Gallery at 38 Cameron A curator who knows her stuff is a great gift to an artist. Thank you to powerhouse Kate Fleming for pulling my work together in such an exemplary way for my show at 38 Cameron. She created […]
- Art Making
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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 […]
- Art Making
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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 […]
Moving in the Landscape as One of Its Details
This was a weekend with a disruptive sense of time. It made me think of an essay by the poet Wendell Berry, “An Entrance to the Woods” in which he describes making a trip to a forest in Kentucky. He leaves work, drives hard over the interstate highways for over an hour, then finally arrives […]
- Art Making
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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 […]
Meaning and Presence
I found an article in The Independent yesterday that I posted on my filter blog Slow Painting. It has dominated my thinking all day. In a singularly succinct manner, it captures a core set of issues that are at the center of my disaffection with a number of trends in contemporary art. These are some […]
Interior Space Deep in the Human Heart
Early on in my art education, a professor told me a parable I have never forgotten. Long ago, an emperor in China loved ducks. Inordinately. His passion was so overwhelming that he called forth the greatest artist and calligrapher in his kingdom and made his request: I want you to create the ultimate image of […]