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Sketchbook # 13: Sophie Balhetchet
The black cloud on the horizon (or is it a little closer than that) is the first thing, but then the parallel sun emerges while receding, the top and bottom of the painting come closer […]
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Sketchbook # 12: Brent Ridge (includes a stop-motion film of a painting in progress)
The most playful, inventive, carefree, totally off-the-wall painter around. The sketchbooks are the laboratory full of ideas, possible approaches and experiments with color, materials and methods. Because it is summer, I’ve imposed some order by […]
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Sketchbook #11: Ying Li
“Ducks’ Ditty” All along the backwater, Through the rushes tall, Ducks are a-dabbling, Up tails all! From “The Wind in the Willows” by Kenneth Grahame (full poem here) The ducks don’t like it. They […]
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Sketchbook #10: Rachel Youens
If you only know Rachel Youen’s paintings of constructed, labyrinthian still lives, you might think she never goes outside. Not true. Dense forests, an aerial view of a bridge, and botanical studies are described in […]
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John Berger / Mike Dibb “Ways of Seeing” Part I
John Berger and the documentary filmmaker Mike Dibb are populists. They believe that painting is for everyone. And so do I. The conundrum that every contemporary painter must struggle with is to keep that humanist […]
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A Christmas Present from Talking Pictures: “Drift of Juicy” and “Heiliger Abend” by Ursula Pürrer
Drift of Juicy looks like it was made with high-tech digital effects but Pürrer made it in 1989 with analog video. It was unique then and is literally inimitable today. Whether it takes place in […]
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Peggy Ahwesh into the Night
The restless night owl Peggy Ahwesh likes to travel and “have adventures.” So since the “world was topsy turvy this summer,”* she scouted locations in upstate NY during the day, drove out along deserted country […]
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To Copy a Burchfield…
…is not easy though I thought it would be. Of course Fantasy of Heat is a watercolor: it is painted transparently with easy fluid brushstrokes and I can’t paint that way. I put some paint […]
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“Artforum” by César Aira, Chapter 3: “Subscription”
Subscription is the third chapter of a marvelous book! I know that much. But not whether it should it be shelved under Autobiography, Collected Essays or Fiction. Aira is very playful. In Subscription, for […]
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If You Live in Bed-Stuy Do This, You’ll Feel A Lot Better!
Staying away from other people in order to keep them safe is an utterly depressing experience. If you are going to the grocery store anyway, and you can afford it, buy some extra things and […]