Some NYC action:

*surely one of the most poetic visions committed to paint on canvas this past year was offered by robert kingston at the randall scott gallery in DUMBO. harshly brushed, worked canvases that invoke, at once, landscape and masters of the past such as twombley and, at times, klee. last year i was lucky enough to attend the opening of kingston's san francisco show and was simply blown away by his achievement. now it seems he's taken the possibilities of that show to new heights. if it's possible for a mature artist to further that maturity, kingston has done it. of particular note was a suite of small works-- a brilliant example of taking control of the issues, not of size, but of scale.

*david hockney at pace was about as dismal a show as i could imagine. huge, multi-paneled paintings of childish landscapes, built up with a clumsy paint handling that just should not be seen from an artist at this stage in a celebrated career...

*you walk chelsea and there is this awesome proliferation of incredibly beautiful japanese women...

*bjorn ressle will be opening his new space downtown...

spent the morning looking at and meditating on the re-worked painting started in 2001. after several months of working mostly in acrylic, all this black oil is really moving. while the speed of acrylic opens it's own possibilities, i'm really digging the slow pace of working in oil once again-- it makes you look and understand what is actually going on in a painting... there is a lot to be said about good acrylic paint, and the improvisation that is readily available while working in acrylics has it's own poetry. but, yeah, oil paint... black oil.

something else entirely...

so, after crazed intensity of making four 8-foot paintings in less than 2 weeks, I'm back to the slow pace of studio work. i've spent the last week re-visiting fairly large drawings that were started last year, created in a span of 4 or 5 months of solid work on paper. now, i've pulled a 6-footer out and put it back on the brooklyn studio wall. this is another work thats been with me since 2001. worked, re-worked, set aside, etc... it's been hanging out now for about 2 years. every now and then i'd take it out and dig it for a while, for one reason or another, never hitting it. that ended yesterday...

a few notes:

*if you see a gallery show this week, make sure you see david novros at the paula cooper gallery on 21st street and vivian springford at gary snyder project space on 26th. these are museum quality shows of 2 painters who have not had their due. novros is still with us. springford is gone...

*the first big week of the art scene has come and gone. we could hardly walk the streets of chelsea, the crowds filled with those who make art, those who buy it and, of course, those who can't, or don't do either...

*another show to make would be jesse mccloskey at the christopher henry gallery, downtown on elizabeth street. this is heavily allegorical work-- painted collage, worked and re-worked into a strange poem of life in the studio. autobiographical? maybe. maybe it's the tale of what we all go through facing the canvas or the panel or the sheet of paper laid out on the work table.

* there is a bar in brooklyn i might not be allowed to enter for a while. thats probably good for both of us...

and now the floating in the pool is done... i'm in the reality of NYC. fair enough.

a good friend is using (and abusing) my studio for a commissioned work. there should be a standard for artists bumming anothers space, as favor, as chance, etc... but i guess there isn't.

a poet from san diego is in town long enough to get me really drunk.

this is life. life attacked or life followed. either way, life...

where am i going with this?? good question.

good question...

the fires are burning around LA and it's late. about 2 weeks ago, while sitting in traffic on the LIE, i got a call from my atlanta gallery about a commision for the Palazzo Tower in las vegas. so i ended up having 4 96"x48" canvases made and delivered and flew out to LA to get down. that was august 19th. after 7 days and about 90 hours of work (given breaks for the pool) i've got 4 eight foot paintings standing in the studio, waiting to be picked up and i'm still trying to understand it all.

luck? the gods, finally smiling? a matter of time? who knows?

i do know this:

keep making work. go to the studio and lay it down. find a way to make the rent. find a way to make someone understand. keep in it. remember why it should happen. believe that there will be your moment. continue to fire up the dream. life doesn't always work for you. thats not what it's supposed to do. but sometimes, once in a very blue moon, it does...

and tomorrow, i will float in the pool and sip a cold mexican beer and remember just that.

the days after an opening are strange... personally, i tend to drift a bit.

troy tecau of 210 gallery and michael brennan met me U in the afternoon before the reception. before they showed up i actually laid a little paint down. it had to be done...

the opening was an awesome experience. great, large, happening crowd including gary snyder, lilly wei, the artists james little, michael rouillard, don voisine, linda byrne, jerry thomas, wayne dobson, The Artist Without a Name (heroically slurring by 10pm),and of course, bjorn ressle and the beautiful denora... the wine flowed and when it stopped we took the party under the BQE to mojitos and kept it going a while longer. i think i drank my first 10 beers in about the first 5 minutes...

and today it's back to work...