The sand along the shore in Small Point, Maine: The water’s silky attention brought to bear [Note: I had surgery on my right hand this week so my ability to type has been compromised while it heals. I am reposting from a few years ago since Jane Hirshfield continues to be a guiding force for […]
Art
What We Can’t Not Do
If you are looking for light holiday viewing, Inside Llewyn Davis, the latest film by Ethan Coen and Joel Coen, isn’t it. If however you are compelled by the power of myth, by the archetype of the artist as a dark hero on a difficult journey, or have firsthand knowledge of how success is often […]
- Art Making
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Legacying a Life
Conflagration, by Gordon Waters (Photo: Art collection of the University of Western Sydney) After years of experience and a commitment to abstraction I am able to “forget myself” with greater ease. The pictures have begun to determine me instead of the other way around. In the process, a more cohesive body of work has evolved. […]
- Art Making
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Grit-Rich
In my studio: Hand molds in a peat bowl by friend and artist Rachel Parry. Parry made both of these objects from substances she found on her land in Allihies, Beara, Ireland. Like most of my readers, I track creativity research like a part time job I’ll have for the rest of my life. With […]
Nicheless de Waal
Edmund de Waal (Photo: Andrew Testa for The New York Times) Mr. de Waal’s inspiration comes as much from poets and musicians as it does other artists: the Japanese photographer Hiroshi Sugimoto “because of the abstract way he deals with an image”; composers like Steve Reich and John Adams, for their serial, repetitive music which […]
A Measure of Splendor
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 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 […]
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 […]
- 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 […]