Saturday, December 27, 2008

i went into the cobalt blue and tossed in some flake white and mixed it up a bit. i can't avoid this combination out here-- how could i?? to deny these would be as phony as a murakami piece of crap tossed into the lobby of some skyscraper. i drive with my mom to get groceries and am blown away by the horizon line before me on sherman way, giant palms lining the street, the mountains ahead of me, the sky above and the sheer lines of white cloud. driving to bergamot station, in santa monica, was a bit of poetry in and of itself. no traffic, clear skies, green hills and a morning of painting behind me. yeah... of particular note was the work of audra weaser at ruth bachofner gallery. truely, some of the best painting of the year, to end the year. roughly sanded, vigorous work. very, very impressive...

now, at this late hour, i'm figuring out some paintings. theres some new directions here, the LA trip always offering it's own take on what it is that i do. how to tie it together?? do i need to even bother with such a question?? out here i'm seeing and coming to terms with the relationships between the recent drawings and my paintings, completed and in progress, of the last few years. i really think that the distance, the time away from the work, totally away and apart from the work has a great deal to do with this... in NYC i work. i see and touch paintings day in and day out, they evolve day to day and are with me, in my minds eye before i sleep and as i drive home. in LA, i walk out to the studio in the morning and the dew is on the grass and the work comes to me and i understand it with a passionate (or perhaps dispassionate) resolve. i know that i have these few days, or even, sometimes, weeks to make them come alive and sing their song. and sing they do, or perhaps not....

Friday, December 26, 2008

a cold day in LA... spent some time out in the studio and did some good work on small drawings, started on the last trip and work on the new large piece. but it was just too cold to be out there, drinking beer and listening to the bamboo, coming off of the gluttony of christmas dinner (dozens of oysters, foie gras, prime rib, an '83 chateau le tour and a '77 grahams port, etc...). tuesday evening before the flight i went uptown to the bjorn ressle gallery. bjorn was there with the artist marjorie welish, the artist mark wiener and a curator from the morgan library, who was intently checking out the work. it was really nice to be able to actually look at the work in relative peace. bjorn cracked open a bottle of white wine and mark and i moved about the walls taking it in. wiener is a sensitive and physical artist. we discussed the ephemera of mark-making and various notions of intent, admiring the wide range of expressions installed in the gallery. once again, the 2 drawings by the composer, john cage really hit me- this stuttering line, moving about the toothy paper in non-committal arabesques... i also spent a lot of time with three drawings by ron gorchov-- as with the cage drawings, these are tough, hermetic efforts, on tough, heavy paper. there is a lack of control that engenders it's own signature of beauty when working with the graphite line on such meaty, heavyweight papers. the line quivers and blurs, coasting along the curvature of surface. regardless of the artist's hand, the line takes off on it's own. and you deal with it or don't... i've found, that with my own drawing, i'm becoming more comfortable working with a lighter, smoother paper. the drawings bjorn exhibited (and the accompanying 9 in a portfolio) are all notebook drawings, autonomous works, but in their roughly handled immediacy, notebook drawings all the same. for my purposes, the acrylic (and/or oil) staining and re-workings of graphite (and/or india ink) come across truer on the smoother surface, the physicality of my efforts taking center stage, as opposed to a physicality imposed on the work by the support itself.

later i went for drinks with bjorn and mark, taking the downtown bus to the legendary, gino's, across from bloomingdales. not my usual stomping grounds, to be sure, but a fine establishment. bjorn and i ordered martinis and then we were joined by the beautiful rocio.... she was impressed when mark said he always painted while wearing a tie.

i can't blame her...

Monday, December 22, 2008

the sausage, garlic and red onion is simmering in the wine and san marzano tomatoes... this morning as i left for the dojo, it was 14 degrees. no shit. 14 degrees... but thats winter and we deal with it. in any event, after hard training and harder xmas shopping, i needed the comfort of pasta, the aforementioned sausage and broccoli rabe. and there is a bottle of chianti waiting as well. and i'm wearing a stocking cap indoors as i type this. winter...

speaking of winter, to revisit the winter salon at bjorn ressle gallery, i must say again it was quite a trip. an opening of your own work is always a beautiful time, but to see your work alongside the works of legendary greats is a totally new and humbling experience. it also (obviously) makes you feel pretty damn good. it makes you feel like you're an artist-- an artist involved in the continuum of this path that we follow. i leave for LA on wed. it'll be a good time with family and food and wine and my new niece and hopefully friends i haven't seen in a while. and the art i left behind from the last trip. LA in december can be gray or it can be brilliant blues and greens and intense sunsets. either way will work for me....

Sunday, December 21, 2008

been a while... the reception for the winter salon at bjorn ressle gallery was pretty intense. the crowds were huge and there was coffee instead of booze, so i was on edge. having said that, it was a beautiful time-- great art, good crowd, friends, etc... of special note were the 2 drawings by the composer, john cage, that hung right below my work. they were free moving, circular works that one might actually expect from cage. a 1958 drawing by robert ryman was also very very special, to say the very least. tuesday i'm going to check out the show myself-- the crowds precluded any real viewing of the art.

Tuesday, December 2, 2008

early morning thinking about de kooning's "montauk highway..." i've no idea how many times i've stood in front of this piece over the years. to my eye, this is de koonings nadir, this where it all came together-- the surest of brushstrokes, the visceral labors to define a landscape... this body of work has been called "imperial". yeah. that pretty much sums it up.

Monday, December 1, 2008

so what is it about paint?? this act we are so involved in... there are numerous considerations, not the least of which is that of the cultural. we are bound to this practice by the hours of those who came so long before us and those that continue on. for better or worse, when we are long long gone, our work remains to mark our trail along the continuum. there are moments of sheer creation and moments of meditation, where we sit and look and look deeper and try to make a sense of it all...

sometimes, out here in the valley, the birds singing and the sound of bamboo in the wind, i have sessions of painting that are so perfect as to perhaps be far too good to be true. indeed, the amount of work painted over would seem to be proof to that. but those times are and have been very very real. the other day, as i was working on a painting on the floor of the studio, i heard a sharp rapping above me. looking up i saw the silouette of a huge crow exploring the leaves on the studio roof for bugs. i just stood there and watched until he grew frustrated with his labors and took off.

that wouldn't happen in brooklyn...

california always gives me ideas and/or evaluations or affirmations. i will be going to black once again... perhaps my flirtations with color have been too much of a figurative journey. it's one thing to see and yet another to replicate. thats what my camera is for... by the same token, i was so taken by the blackened landscape of the north valley hillsides.

in the burnt branches of trees, clinging to a mountain, there is a black so dark that we can't even say it's name.

that might be what i'm looking for...
there are early mornings when i step out onto 7th avenue, about 7:20Am, on my way to the dojo. the sky is the most brilliant of light cobalt blues and i look up at it from the shadows of the buildings around me. it's a unique, incredibly alive moment. and there are the the encino sunsets i look at from my fathers garage as we drink beer, or what have you... there is the early morning fog out here in the valley, the fog that burns off to leave the sun and it's crisp, true light.

good work has been done in the few days i've been out here. pushing the drawings, trying to see where they're going. 3 are being framed for the show at bjorn ressle fine art, but i want to have as many as possible ready, should heavy action start up... i re-visited 2 paintings, one black and one red. red is unusual for me-- a bit too loud, perhaps, but it's working. the black one is a tough, solid work, could be done, whatever that means. and i've gone back into one of the 5-footers started on the last trip. i laid it out on the lawn and hit it with a dark gray liquid acrylic, then went to lunch at my sisters place and fed my new niece. and got to hold her for the first time. when you feed a woman, they usual end up digging you. this chick is no different... back to the painting, i went into it with the same dark gray and did some rubbing, etc. it's an aggressive surface right now, looking pretty good. we'll see... this is either a good thing or just "a thing", about having a studio on 2 coasts-- you make the moves and see what happens and it looks good and then you go away and come back to it and think, "what the fuck???". but thats ok... i try to use it to my advantage. in the end, it's beautiful to be able to paint and walk (or fly) away and forget it for a bit of time and come back and look on that surface anew. and then begin again or pick up again and figure out what it (the painting) is really supposed to be about. and thats how i'm approaching the sculptural projects i've got going... we'll see how they develop as the time comes that they need to develop.

art...

crissy and i spent the day at LACMA on saturday. first time i'd been there, since all the new renovations and construction. in the end, it was pretty glorious... the modern collection is beefed up and given ample room to flex it's muscle-- a truely great (and enormous) sam francis, a tough, tough diebenkorn and de kooning's "montauk highway", a great, massive motherwell "elegy", and one of the best clyfford stills i've seen... clyff is great-- if for no other reason than his ambition and need, but he was a most flawed critic of his own work. too much went out of the studio. period... but this piece at LACMA gives us what he meant for us to have-- the epic expanse, the physicality of color and pigment and awesome vision of 1 man against the hours of a day and the days of a week into a year or however long it took to realize the final work.

and then there is the broad collection. well, what can one say??? a fine, late twombly, any number of sad jasper johns, rusha (of course) and an entire 6 to 7,000 square foot gallery of fucking jeff koons... theres no point to discuss the koons nonsense, so i won't bother... having said that, however, i'll get up now and pour another scotch to ease my sensibilities.

ok, so if you make it past that bullshit, you are rewarded with serra's "band" and "sequence". these are 2 later works that offer a navagational tilt to the maestro's body of work. i've gone on at length about serra's importance to me, so i won't re-hash my admiration. suffice to say, it's a great experience to be able to engage with this artists work. and i consider myself very, very lucky to have done so as much as i have.

my parents took me for a driving tour of the burned out hillsides of the north valley. i took some cool photos climbing about the charred hills and my father and i returned with the pick-up to salvage a large stump/root, blackened and scarred and a 7 foot piece of PVC that had been partially melted and cooked to resemble the bone of some ancient beast. these will figure into sculptural projects sooner or later....

Saturday, November 22, 2008

bjorn ressle has taken 3 of my small drawings for a show in december. it's a salon show, of a large number of artists, but i'm in there with beuys, ryman, anastasi, howard smith, etc... it feels good. real good... and right around the corner from the Met. beautiful...

more on the kingston show in san fran...

yeah.

kingston has consistantly figured out how to make a great painting. i'm saying this from the view-point of having seen many of them in his studio. whats interesting is how many great paintings have been painted over, never to see the light of day. this is part (a large part) of kingston's poetry-- he paints. and paints... obviously, there is precedent for such practice (i follow it myself)-- picasso and de kooning both were reluctant to release works from the studio despite crushing poverty. throughout the ages, artists have been in situations where the single canvas represented a lifes work, by form or by function. by necessity or by obsession..

i believe there are times when the artist retreats to a simplicity of practice to simply exist as a working artist. moments lost in the mere application of material on support-- lost in the activity of motion and creation. this is not rosenbergs "action painter", i'm discussing here a tantric, mature approach to creation and a physical necessity and practice of application.

kingston approaches this with his determined re-drafting of composition. in the dolby chadwick gallery, i pondered briefly what paintings lied underneath the paintings i saw. in the end, it didn't matter. whatever had come before had bred the work before me.

and thank god for it...

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

ok, so poetics and booze-fueled revery aside, a discussion of the kingston show...

i sit in a rarified space, in that i have seen kingston actually apply paint to canvas. we have upturned countless mexican brews as we pontificated on the act and passion of paint. that being said, the kingston show was truly spectacular. i have seen his faults and i have seen his glories-- kingston glides about at times-- but this particular show made any past discrepancies a very moot point. he is a child of klee, de kooning and guston. these influences peak out, but yeild to the single-handedly emotional, yet stoic brushstroke of kingston and his notion of layering forms and mists and files of information. the best of kingston is in the emptiness of space-- an emptiness that is, in fact, quite dense with information, fecund with reference. nothing is left out of a painting-- history, philosophy, geography, etc... the end result is a solidly consistant exhibiton of paintings that meet in a space of beautiful synchronicity.

kingston seems enamored (as i am) by landscape and the mysterious gloss of it's potential. his approach, however, is one of interpreter-- he sees and evaluates according to his practice...

this is painting of a high, high modernist slant, with the salient gist of a man and artist engaged in his time and it's precedents. we need more of this.

much more...

Sunday, November 16, 2008

Notes on San Francisco:

* the martin puryear retrospective kicked ass... as with kingstons painting, there was the quasi-literary, or representational quality of the work. shapes and forms (and ideas) that rest in the collective unconcious-- trapped or lost by travel, work, love, life, etc... we lose things and regain them inspite ourselves. in any event, this was sculpture of strength and understanding. as moving a show as one could wish to spend an afternoon in.

* the matthew barney piece at san francisco museum of modern art (martin puryear): this is  drawing taken to a certain extreme of risk and intent. this is art taken to an athletic format of daring adventure. this is art, drawing in particular, not to be missed... Barney actually climbed the turret of the museum and while hanging with carabiners, "performed", if you will, the drawing in question on a wall of the turret. and it's a hell of a drawing, regardless of the physical baggage attached. yeah... indeed, as irrelevant as much of barney's work is, there are elements and particular events and objects that cannot be missed or ignored. much of his work (including his failures) move us forward, as artists and viewers. and it must be stated, in the end, he is a gutsy motherfucker. period...

*with the exception of kingstons gallery, dolby chadwick, the spaces in san francisco aren't very impressive. some in fact are downright depressing-- windowless, cramped cubicles.

* in the secondary gallery of dealer, claire carlevaro, i saw a small piece by the artist renata mclean. it was a violently gestural work, the strokes done in heavy, linear motions, seeming to join in the near middle of the the panel. mclean and her husband moved to nyc in 1960 and there is no biographical data since. a tragic mystery. who was this woman?? in the same space there were strong drawings by james budd dixon, frank lobdell and small works by hassel smith and karl benjamin.

the work of the san francisco school always seemed rather playful to me. too much so, truth be told. perhaps this was the experimental nature of the beats and of the city itself. perhaps it was a lack of seriousness, or a certain all-too democratic nature and pursuit of art. in any event, the work, no matter how inspired, generally fell short for me. the exceptions of course, being diebenkorn and various artists in various moments. but, yeah, it never measured up for me. or for history, for that matter. but here was something to bite into. these works, works on paper, wood and canvas were solid, tough expressions of the time and of the tradition. good to see... i just wish i had a few thousand bucks in my pocket at the time.

* if you're in san francisco, don't miss the de young museum. a strong, strong collection and a view from the top that is worth any number of entrance fees. the whole of the city stretched out before you.

*i bought some earrings from a street vendor. she made them herself that afternoon on that very corner. she told me she was a painter and asked what i was doing in san fran. when i told her i was an artist she asked where i was from. when i said new york, she asked if i sold my work. " as often as i can," i said. she looked at me with a straight face and asked, "are you rich?"

* 3 nights i had dinner at la fina stampa and enjoyed the marinated beef heart and broiled tripe, with numerous negro modelos and shots of cuervo. the intensity of these meals cannot be overstated...

* there are men ( and some women, though seemingly far fewer in number) who scurry about the streets in worn clothing and dirty shoes, lacking teeth and bathes and haircuts or shaves or meals, for that matter. they aren't the homeless you see in nyc or LA, in fact, they are (many of them, i'm sure) not homeless. they are the casualties of the 60's and the promises and missteps of a certain segment of a certain part of the american left in a certain part of late 20th century history. they are the casualties of MFA programs and acid, literature and buying into your own (or another's ) romanticism.

they were looking for something.

i hope they remember what it was...

Saturday, November 15, 2008

as usual, this is late in coming... but san francisco was quite a trip. the robert kingston show at dolby chadwick gallery was nothing short of a triumph. that first afternoon, the day before the opening, i cruised in and checked things out. in fact, truth be told, i cruised in and got blown away by serious kick-ass abstract painting. this was the show kingston could have done years ago, but, saddled with a passing fancy for geometric abstraction, didn't. this was the art the 2 of us have discussed in studios from nyc to LA, over beers and over mexican food in both cities. this was the art that any true painter should aspire to. this was the art that should be made. there was the heartily consistant, ballsy quality to each piece. the pallet limited to earthy tones and bone whites. there was the ubiquitous kingston moves-- the semi-literate sketches, the cross-hatching of brush strokes, the newspaper pull off of passages of color. and there was the sure handed strength of an artist at the ready. this was the show that artists long to see on those nights out to the galleries. this was the show that was so needed today. today and any other day for that matter...

as for the city itself-- san francisco still has it's whores and junkies stalking downtown. my hotel, mere blocks from the gallery and union square was surrounded by them. but it's a different take on the seedy nature of urban america. this wasn't the land of the walking dead that downtown LA was and (for the most part) still is, this was a living, working, disordered level of society and, indeed, america. this is the seediness of being on the make, looking for the next move, the next outlet. furtive, endangered and dirty...

and there were the numerous pints of stella in the vesuvio cafe, ducking into city lights bookstore to read pages of poetry and criticism, back to vesuvio to talk to the aged beat poet, her hair long turned gray, but still turning it on. she spoke of the main men-- kerouac, ginsberg, mcclure, snyner, rexroth, etc... life is good.

but sometimes it's better then we think.

more to come...

Friday, October 31, 2008

so, yeah, richard serra... what can you say?? at beacon, i walked in and among the series of torqued ellipses, musing that it was an experience that can't be described. serra's achievement is one on the order of nature itself. by that i mean that he has surpassed the experiential facet of art and elevated it to the the level of the natural world. i've been caving and i've seen some spectacular caverns here and in europe. i've had lots of time on lots of beaches and in lots of boats, big game fishing. the feeling i get in these intense natural settings is very similar to the feelings i get while enveloped in serra's spaces. it's a sense of awe and, indeed a feeling of one's own insignificance in the scope of certain realities... this had been acheived, to a certain degree, in the painting of newman, pollock and rothko. it was the goal of clyfford still and perhaps motherwell. 

what sets serra (and heizer) apart is the unnerving ambition and final realization of an art that goes beyond what we know as art... 

next week i fly to san francisco for the opening of robert kingstons solo show at dolby/chadwick gallery. i haven't been to san fran since i was a child, so this is pretty exciting. and it's always good to meet a new dealer. we'll see what happens...

Friday, October 17, 2008

last week i drove up to millbrook, new york, to hang out with my friend and former dealer, andrew miller. he renovated a stone barn a few years ago and it's a truely awesome space. we ate giant ribeyes and went through 3 bottles of good st.emilion. and a few martinis. next day after bacon and eggs, we drove down to beacon to check out the dia center. in a word: amazing...

if you don't know much about michael heizer, try to find out as much as you can. the man's vision and his art is as profound as his ambition. of particular note, his piece magalith #5, rates for me as one of the most important sculptural statements of this century. the work includes a vertical recession into the wall of the gallery, maybe 18 feet high and lined with steel. inside the recession is anchored a boulder filling the vertical space. you can't really write a description about something this intense and pass it off. yes, i've written before about first hand experience with art, but this is taking that idea to a new level... i'll get back to this, not to mention the awesome holdings of serra, agnes martin, bob ryman, etc...

Tuesday, October 7, 2008

40 something degrees this morning on my way to the dojo... fall in nyc.

to 20x20's are looking good. 3 of them are now a very strong tryptich, horizontal, a rich, opaque black. now i'm trying to figure out the alignment. spent several hours the other day moving them around and just checking them out. but, yeah, it looks good... multi-panel works have always excited me and i haven't done one in quite a while. the multi-panel work demands a different viewing practice. the eye moves differently and the space between each panel is so important-- breathing room, etc...

Tuesday, September 23, 2008

david foster wallace is now with the dead of their own hand... tragic.

he joins hart crane, rothko, gorky, schwartz, plath, chatterton and untold hundreds more who none of us have ever heard of. perhaps this seals his genius. there are no arguments from the grave.

off his meds, he fucking hung himself.

and let his wife come home to that...

ok, i'm done.

Monday, September 22, 2008

dragged myself out of the studio to make the scene in chelsea once again... the 12 20x20's are coming along nicely. the possibility of a grid may or may not come about. we'll see. several stand very much alone, while a few are looking a bit like a suite of paintings... so, yeah, we'll
see...

last thursday was a good night. 25th street was jammed with the usual hangers-on, the art world pros and the hopefuls. of special note was jay kelly at jim kempner fine art on 23rd street. i've seen kelly's work before-- small drawings on vellum; hermetic line and atmosphere spaced elegantly for such a small support. the word intimate comes to mind... this show also featured his new sculptural pieces, of a suitably minature stature, each about 5 to 6 inches high. there is a heavy surrealist bent to this art, most notably in the sculpture, but these are very pure statements by the artist-- not some vague reference to the past.

then the artist james austin murray and myself found ourselves in the half-king, at the end of the bar, appreciating the barmaid and toasting the evening with stella artois.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

take the time to find out something about these artists: vivian springford, howard mehring, thomas downing, leon berkowitz and albert stadler. these are the painters exhibited in "color field revisited", at gary snyder/project space. springford, in particular, grabbed my attention. her work, violent, organic, heroic (in scale and intention) offered some of the boldest color and execution i've seen this year.

i'll be very honest in saying that (with the exception of berkowitz) i'd never heard of these artists. somehow their legacies coasted along under the radar these past decades. i've mentioned before the reality of artists toiling in the harsh solitude demanded of the painter, never to gain recognition, let alone the contemporary accoutrement of financial security. it's our lot in life. some combine the luck with the talent and some just get lucky.

some don't...

later that night we checked out a party for novelist, francis levy and his book, erotomania: a romance. the bash was held at the museum of sex on 5th avenue, a fitting venue given levy's subject matter. levy is a large man with a large mustache (a muscular ford maddox ford, if you will...). each thursday morning, i can look forward to sweat and spit flying off that mustache as a large overhand right makes contact with my collar bone or chin. in the clinch, levy sports a fine uppercut...

i'm half way through my copy. so far the cast of characters include a hatian/german stripper who studied architecture, dance and french theater, but found that, "...the esthetic rewards of the classical stage didn't justify the near-poverty conditions", and a hooker withwhom the protagonist discusses Rilke's "letters to a young poet".

it's easy to cast about comparisons in the discussion of literary matters. when a writer takes on the subject of sexuality, it's really easy. fine. here are some names for you: bukowski, bataille and genet. but levy adds the sharp intellectual edge of a real new yorker to his prose. and bataille and genet aren't funny.

Friday, September 19, 2008

this one might get interrupted... in any event it was a week of culture. thankfully... tuesday night i checked out the opening at gary snyder/project space. historical, stain based painting from the late 60's, early 70's era. good stuff.... i'll go more into this show later, after a bit of research. suffice to say, major paintings were lost to the pantheon and certain painters never got there due.

the highlight, however, was walking into gary's office and seeing a stoic, yet dynamic horizontal piece by the artist, john griefen. this piece stopped me (and the artist james austin murray) in our tracks. a bony white, the work (as a fool, i have no title) arrested the space and the wall and, obviously, my eye. this is the monochrome taken to it's potential, and driven home. period... easily, one of the stronger pieces seen this year.

Monday, September 15, 2008

this day of training, and the rest of the week, will be dedicated to the memory of Evan Tanner-- warrior-poet, traveler, adventurer and seeker. Tanner was also a former UFC middleweight champion of the world. he died last week, in the desert of southern california. his body was found a week to this day. 

the sheriff said it was exposure to the elements.

and we are less because of this loss. 

Tanner was the real thing. i have been shaken to the core by this tragic news... but, perhaps, there is some poetry to this-- Rimbaud died running guns in africa...

as a man involved in pugilism and grappling of various forms, as well as the asian martial arts, the news  of Tanner's passing was painful. 

as an artist and man of letters, it was more so. 

i believe in saints. but the ones i believe in are never recognized...

i raise this glass of cold vodka to you, Evan.
many thanks...

Sunday, September 7, 2008

i never thought i'd be a part of the gentrification of LIC (a once great neighborhood in west queens, across the river from manhattan. it was once a small town, idependent of the CITY, you walked the streets and ran into people you knew, you went to the irish pub and ate and got drunk and the girls knew you so it was ok... you walked along vernon blvd. and always loved the view of the city but didn't think about it coming after you and then you get evicted for luxury condos and the world changes but not much and you end up in brooklyn and LIC and all the fun and all the rest seems long, long ago), but i guess i am now... i stood out on the balcony of an apartment along the river on the 26th floor and looked east to see the very window of my old factory loft studio in LIC. behind me, on the wall hung a 6x5 painting, birthed in that studio, long gone, but still, mere blocks away. it (the painting) had come home...

strange. strange indeed.... in any event, we ate a couple of rabbits and drank cote du rhone and now i have a commission for a piece for the dining room.

bruno said he liked to challenge me.
very well...
bring it on.

Wednesday, September 3, 2008

i wrapped 2 of the pieces sold and my art handling guy (eliot markel, via transport) made the delivery this afternoon. and i put some more paint and (finally) gesso, on the 20x20's...

its good to have this momentum going into the art season.
its good to be able to make work and come home and enjoy being home.
its good to know that there are people out there
waiting to see what you have come up with
and loving it when you show them what the hours have brought out.
its good to sit in a chair and look at the stuff tossed about the studio.
you pick up a book and read a few pages;
you listen to music (bill evans);
you scratch some charcoal into a drawing and sit back down
and the sounds of an old building creak under you
and you feel like an artist.

Monday, September 1, 2008

sold 3 big pieces out of the studio on saturday afternoon... my collectors, bruno and agnes theirry, moved back to NYC from paris and picked up 2 paintings. their friend, catherine, got another. that feels good, the drought being broken... strange how collectors never have checkbooks with them in the studio.
no problem. none at all...

got the grounds finished on 12 20x20 canvases. they could be a large grid-- not sure yet. we'll see.

but, yeah, 3 paintings sold-- it feels good. real good.

Friday, August 22, 2008

there is this small piece in the encino studio. it's been on the wall for probably a year or so by now... for some reason i turned it horizontal (doesn't really work that way) but the big thing about it is the black band of curving motion that cuts thru it's middle. so it seems i've brought some of that back east with me. right now, about 5 pieces in motion have a variation of that gestural marking. it's rather liberating to load up a brush and drag it along that near circular form. back in the spring in california, i was drawing flowers-- caught up in how the charcoal carried along the paper surface following that very feminine form. was that the attraction?? probably always has been.... but yeah, it's found it's way into the large painting. we'll see where this goes.

ran into ed moses at the frank lloyd gallery in santa monica before i flew back. he's about 82 or 83 now. still making art. and most of it- good, maybe great... 

i don't really think he remembered me, but he said it was good to see me again, so thanks, ed, it was good to see you as well. keep it going...

Friday, August 15, 2008

ok, last night in LA... or the valley, as it were. a good early morning painting and then hanging in and by the pool with beers and my dad. then grilling steaks for my nephews birthday.

last night the artist, robert kingston came out and checked out the new paintings. since the time i've been here, i've danced around the new ideas and then revisited the existing body of work with 2 pieces left over from my last trip out here. so it's come full circle: the paintings to the drawings to the new paintings and how it all comes together as a whole... good words and good advice from robert as we drained can after can of mexican beer under the orange tree. i'm off the idea of following some plan and am back into the rush of confusion that usually gives me (to my mind) the tools to make good (or great) art. the last days out here are always tied up with bummed out feelings of leaving my family and the pool and the killer studio and my sculptures in the garden and the bamboo and the flowers and all the rest. at the same time i get that excitement once again of flying back to the city and the scene and the crazy life of making art in NYC.

a random thought:

i know when i go to bergamot station in santa monica that i will see some good painting. 
period.

in NYC i hope to see good painting. more often than not, i end up pissed and pissed off...

a few more random thoughts:

*the art of southern california has (in general) become so geographically self-referential that it seems to deny any chance of true power or relevance to the world outside it's borders of highways, ocean and desert. everywhere you look there is the imagery of the beach, of suburban ranch homes, car pools, swimming pools, drive-thru fast food joints, film noir, hollywood retro, etc, etc... and the glare, that bloody glare of resin and the slick surface of "the shine..." now, granted, there is a huge audience for this in london, berlin, tokyo, etc. there are MFA candidates across the country who have never even seen a beach, let alone a palm tree, foaming at the mouth in an effort to get this very subject matter down cold. but consider this: imagine a new york scene populated by statues of liberty, coney island freak shows, taxis, hot dog stands, yankee stadiums, rockefeller centers, central park horse carriages, what have you. to be fair, you might see one of these examples now and again (sadly) but it's not the dominate strain of imagery and content. not even close. there is (and should be) a universal, historical and international mode of expression that is there for the taking. for art to succeed, in any media, it must reach for this language and come to terms with it.

*any writing on art done in LA (or surrounding areas) can't help but mention NYC, one way or another... there is the constant song of "ignored by...", "passed over by...", or even, "...recognized by...". the most glaring culprit is the magazine, Art Ltd. almost every profile, discussion, or announcement seems to fall into this trap.

*a random piece of criticism i read last week offered these tired, sagging cliches in discussing a group show: "exploring our perceptions..."; "challenging pre-conceived notions of..." and,"questioning our ideas of..."

except for a very few, this is what art writing has come down to.  everywhere...

*in LA, dennis hopper is considered an elder statesman of the art world.

i'm not trying to bitch, just checking things out and typing it... there is, quite undeniably, great, important art (painting) being made in LA, the inland empire, orange county and the rest. the sheer cultural weight of the region cements this fact as a given. at the same time, however, there is this incestuous cultural circularity within much of the art (good and bad) being made that ties it to the land and, to that end, the time of it's creation. simply put, this labels and dates the art involved in this practice. the phrase, "california artist" flows off the tongues of too many, too often to be healthy. i should know-- i've been labeled one several times, in various group shows i was fortunate enough to be involved in around the country. out here, there seems to be an apprehension at the thought of being a "regional artist". its an apprehension so dense and tactile you feel the tension rising up in conversations and writings before you hear it or see it. sadly and tellingly, this is a self-fulfilling prophecy for many artists, in many ways...

Friday, August 8, 2008

a bit after 10 at night... a very productive couple of days. i ended up pulling out the second virgin canvas this morning and now it's nearing some sort of completion. that makes 2 works that are looking strong and standing for themselves. maybe not... i've tossed myself into the void for this work. why not?? no sales of late, so fuck it. and there are the drawings back in brooklyn to back this adventure up. so now, the drawings have begat the paintings. and i must say, i'm very happy. for now. the work is rather harsh-- spontaneous and organic. as formal as the drawings seemed to me, these works are pushing the painterly edge. there is the formal structure, the geometry, if you will, but beyond that the space abutting the rectangular forms is violent with the rigor of paint and gesture. the drawings (at their best) were brought together from the formal structures as well as the incidental activity about the margins-- the dusting of charcoal; the fingerprints; the shots of liquid pigment... now that activity has been replaced by the trowel of gesso dragged across the canvas; the hammer of the brush; the harsh caress of sandpaper.

i sat under the orange tree, sipping a california red, trying to understand what i had brought about in these 2 or 3 days. i spent a bit of time photographing the work, but too much was lost to really make that count for anything. these works, as they stand, must be considered in the flesh. in general, as i've stated numerous times, abstract painting cannot be taken as fodder for reproduction or documentation. by the very nature of the medium, painting of an abstract nature (or, indeed, painting as a whole) must be confronted in the most intimate of viewings. sadly, thats not always possible.... regardless, i'm thinking that this work might be my strongest to date. it seems that the concerns of my preceding bodies of work are being addressed here and brought forward to a mature reasoning. so much of my past output has been refined and re-worked and refind again. i'll always stand by that work, but right now, this seems a more honest and athletic offering. perhaps the battle between influences has been decided, or smoothed out. there (has) is always the tension between the romance of pollock and the intellect of newman and (romance as well) rothko. much of the work on these paintings was done while they lay in the grass by the pool, outside the studio. the brush didn't hover over the canvas (dripping), it slapped down onto it and then moved accordingly, some of the trail left behind, some wiped away after its use had run dry...

under the orange tree, with a glass of wine, i mused that the most important thing to do is to actually look at a painting-- to see it and study it, bringing it into your conciousness. the reality of seeing a painting-- really looking at and seeing a painting, should be an active, wholly involved endeavor. the time must be set aside and relished... a quiet, profound slice of the day before or behind us, just looking... sitting and looking.

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

back in california... late last night i checked out the studio to see what was left behind. a few 4 footers that were in progress and 2 untouched 5x4 canvases ready for heavy action. good.

i've decided that my time out here will be spent on only 1 of the new canvases. i want to take my time and see how far i push the acrylic, before hitting it with oil. i've knifed the underpainting on heavily in a few different reds and some gel medium to get a good body of surface built up and now it sits in the grass under the sun. next step will be a few layers of white gesso and then the real work begins....

yesterday, before the flight i spent some time with gary snyder at his gallery on 26th street. i told him about my intentions and he mentioned that sometimes the slow periods in one's career can be the most creative. the group show he has up is closing soon. ?abstraction. do yourself a favor and check out the work of tad wiley. tough, totemic work that shows a sure hand and a most vigorous intent.

now i'm gonna see if the paint is dry. or maybe i'll just have a beer first and float a while in the pool...

Monday, August 4, 2008

so it seems i've reached a cross roads of sorts... the drawings i've been so engaged in were birthed from my paintings of the last 3 or so years. now, it looks like a new body of work will come from the drawings (paintings based on the drawings)... i've done no practical work on this as yet, just thinking about it. but, i must say, this seems logical and rather sane. the margin of the paper becomes the margin of the canvas, etc. this can happen.

tomorrow i fly to LA. i've a few untouched canvases there in the studio... i guess this could start out there. out there as well as anywhere. yeah...

Monday, July 28, 2008

i was reading some writing by the artist, christopher rico and he asked where the heroic painting was... good question. the answer is that it's in the studios of inspired artists of strength and vigor, in studios with stains of paint on the floor and slashing brushstrokes across  some walls. there may be drawings scattered about the space, perhaps old coffee cans of brushes and turp, paint spattered newsprint and  masking tape are strewn about... yeah, the heroic paintings... the epic, profound painting, and indeed, art is out there. we just have to look a bit harder to find it. perhaps we just have to make it. as barnett newman admonished us (i paraphrase), sometimes a painter has to paint something to have something to look at-- sometimes he must write so as to have something to read. great art is not easy. it can be difficult to look at and it is for sure difficult, if not nearly impossible to create. fine. we continue... i've been thinking a lot about this lately. there are untold numbers of unknown artists who may have shared beers with the great of their generation, but did their own work in utter obscurity. but the work was done. perhaps they sold a few over the years, perhaps not. you look at joan mitchells work and see it's not much, for the most part. think about how many stronger artists were out there working hard  that never made it. but i digress...

at the action/abastraction show at the jewish museum, i got (once again) what it was all about-- the act; the act and the  values that the artists before pushed forward...  what i'm talking about here is intent and emotional content, perhaps spiritualism and yes, heroism-- the epic utterance of creation. 

late this afternoon i drove out to the brooklyn studio. digging the natural light flooding in, i worked 3 or 4 canvases, went into a large drawing (acrylic and charcoal) and sat back and checked it all out... then i drove down the street to steiner studios and picked up my woman from her tv gig and drove over the bridge to manhattan. after parking, we stopped into an opening at the 2/20 gallery on 16th street, curated by the dealer larry sobribski. it was good work-- late 60's modernism-- works on paper and some sculptural works... some good names in there as well, michel steiner, pozzi and moss. some others that escape me now... but i'll get back to it in the next day or so. and then we kept walking home a few blocks to a hot bath and glass of cold vodka.

Sunday, July 27, 2008

ok, yeah... it has been a heavy few months. but that just  means you're living life. the day back i fucked my knee up in aikido, training with (6th dan) gary snyder. the next night gary and i work on the Pinan katas and then went out to the brooklyn studio and looked at paintings. First of all, i must say, gary is one of the most talented martial artists i've been  in contact with. Having said that, i will go on to say that his understanding, in regards to painting, is an understanding of the finest connoisseur. he said he saw 20% weakness and 80% strength in the work. fair enough. of particular note, he mentioned his  criteria for looking art... a fascinating evening. and much appreciated.

 a few weeks later the dealer, bjorn ressle came out. we shared a bottle of cote du rhone and looked at the work. we'll see what happens... bjorn wants to get some of the big critics out for lunch and to the studio. both lilly wei and bob morgan were mentioned. as usual, we'll see what happens...

the openings of chelsea have been pretty pathetic. not only is it summer (when nyc closes shop) but it's just an uninspired mix of student art and general crap. enough said... having said that, the  action/abstraction show at the jewish museum is truely incredible. i mean that-- truely incredible. i met the artist/author marjorie welish there 2 weeks ago. marjorie is a true new york intellectual, old school, hard core intellect. but as for the exhibit-- major works by major artists... the single greatest rothko i've seen in the flesh-- an incredible piece (untitled, 1961), a dark, brooding piece, of strong painterly notion and intent. fine minor works by newman and a singularly sublime piece by reinhardt. yeah, beautiful...

and now i'm coming off several really good days in the studio. 

right now, i can't complain...

Saturday, July 26, 2008

ok, i'm back on this... life throws many difficulties your way, as an artist, or as anybody... so, you deal with it and then get back in the studio and do your work. 

it's been a heavy couple of months... more to  come.

yeah.

Sunday, May 4, 2008

nyc... a couple of martinis in the burbank airport and then i'm on the plane, trying to study japanese. reading some paul thoreau and waiting to get home. the line for taxis was brutal, especially having to hear the conversations around me... so be it. back in the new york groove.

with a tan...

Saturday, May 3, 2008

so while floating in the pool with a cold beer and looking around me at the water under the sun, i was thinking about the small moses piece at the blake gallery that was really my favorite. i wish i could remember it's title. in any event, sometimes you just wish you walked around with 4 grand in your pocket... water, motion, etc.

checked out bergamot station, some strong stuff going on... at ruth bachofner, barbara kerwin and gary edward blum made for a really impressive pairing. blum's work has that full-on originality that rarely comes about-- he's working the representation of the abstract that my friend, wess dahlberg has so eloquently operated in for the last few years. blum goes a bit too far for me though. his hand and his eye are sure, but i'd appreciate just some straight abstraction, the representative just a bit too much. but nicely done, really well done...

barbara kerwin's work has gone from the sculpturaly minimal to a take on the grid and it's potential. she works in encaustic, now adding acrylic and it's flat opacity, for a more complex visual give and take. the wax rests in relief on the surface almost quivering there in it's armature. this is sensitive, poetic stuff that one should expect from an artist of her stature.

at frank lloyd gallery there was some great porcelin sculpture by cheryl ann thomas. the pieces were modest sized and very powerful, given their scale. modestly priced as well. like i said, you just want to walk around with 4 grand on you when you check out the scene... thomas somehow manages to give the work the look of fabric layered upon itself, or indeed, carelessly tossed into a corner and left behind. this is a work with the handsome incidental quality i really relate to. to be honest, this is probably the first time i've seen porcelin as a medium of real power in contemporary art-- outside of the utilitarian or decorative. very refreshing...

bobbie greenfield presented david shapiro, the show consists of a few paintings and works on paper.... tough, organic labors-- gesture, soft line, earthen palette. startling compositions in horizontal formats that really seduced the eye...

Friday, May 2, 2008

6 ribeyes on the grill and i ate 2 of them... life is good sometimes.

last night was in laguna beach at peter blake gallery, checking out the andy moses show. good crowd, great area, beautiful night and beautiful women. the art? well... moses is working the landscape/seascape horizon line, i've mined this myself, still am. when he ties it together with a signature sharp white pinstripe across the center it all comes together. when he eschews the sharp line it tends to blur. maybe thats the point, who am i to say? but i'm saying it... he's capable of making some really strong work. his use of blue and of black is poignant and indeed, sublime. when he strays off into the neon and electric things go awry. but that holds true for any painter.

all in all quite a night. the perfume of weed permeated the back gallery and the patio, the women tottered on high, high heels and there were a few tussles with a rather sad band of hipsters, one of whom got dumped on his ass, another chased around an alley by a 52 year old painter. good fun for all, except maybe the hipsters in their outfits and bruised egos.

earlier in the day i was at the studio of robert kingston. he had a few pieces in there, a new large one that was looking good and 2 smaller pieces that, though very minimal, were powerful, intense works. i mentioned to him that perhaps the smaller proportion lends itself to a pared down composition-- his scale rarely changes-- the larger works offers the appropriate arena for grander gesture and content...

from kingston's studio i drove (endured traffic) east to alex couwenberg's home and studio. then alex and i took off for laguna. i reflected that it was a pretty cool to be cruising to an opening in the black mercedes of another painter. success is a sweet energy...

spent the day in the pool and working with pastels, charcoal and graphite. trying to hit the color i'm surrounded by out here-- flowers, olive trees, eucalyptus, sky, grass, life, etc.

it was a good day.

Monday, April 28, 2008

flying to LA in the morning... i guess the reason i still love NYC is that i leave it as often as i can. 
maybe...

last week was a good week of work in the studio-- still working drawings and still really excited by them. there is a certain intimacy to the act of drawing that is so different from painting. right now, i'm still wondering where these works lead, or, indeed, if they lead anywhere. 

flying between LA and NYC always has an affect on my art. what will happen now??  soon enough i'll be sitting under the orange tree again trying to bring it all together. we'll see...

Monday, April 21, 2008

well, its been a while... life. 

as for the nyc art world, the best thing that happened was the benefit for non objectif sud at gary snyder project space. a fine salon show, of smaller works, the notable standout being a modest sized piece by michael brennan. i must say, no bullshit, this small work by brennan was one of the strongest works i've seen this year. a very,very powerful painting-- hard edged precision met with (seemingly) spontaneous brushwork. just a gorgeous and profound statement.

in the studio i'm working drawings in pastel and charcoal. layers and layers of each, some rubbed out, some layers sanded away, etc... perhaps i'm actually searching for a monochrome or just stumbling upon one. i'm not sure... i do know that i've been seduced by the sheer space and scale of these drawings, not to mention the practice of making them. this is a new adventure for me, one i'm just going to ride out and see what happens. for good or ill...

ok, it's late enough. late enough to try to sleep...

Friday, March 28, 2008

it's the week of the armory show... tuesday night i went to the phillips de pury preview show. big crowd, crowded bar, 2 or 3 good pieces in the whole 2 floors. ran into the writer, anthony hayden guest. we talked boxing and fighting in general... his nose is pretty bashed up, missing some teeth, so he looks the part. my friend andrew miller, former dealer and bon vivant, was visiting from the bahamas. he's known hayden guest for  a while and has some good stories... we took a cab with anthony to the home of the publisher of modern painters and art and auction-- top floor of the richard meyer building on charles street. fully catered (i parked myself at the tray of crabcakes when she started her speech), guys in black walking around with trays of champagne and wine. ran into an old freind, katya and her husband greg, a good painter. she introduced me to some girls from pace wildenstein including arnie glimcher's wife or daughter. the cute pace girl from houston looked at me and said, "you're more a brice marden kinda guy..."

hit some openings last night and somewhat predictably, ended up at an outside table at half king drinking pints... met a gallerist from belgium, jan. cool guy, white glasses and long hair. he didn't seem engaged by talk of painting... fair enough.

which actually brings up the really, really wretched amount of bad photography and video nonsense i've suffered through since tuesday. why are people doing this?? why is it making money? of course the answers to those questions are easy to come by. or maybe not... a lot of it is the blurring between media and culture. 

a lot of it is just having a little art school, a tepid creative buzz and a fear of getting your hands dirty... 

Monday, March 24, 2008

so, once again, i've read something that sets me off... an article in new york magazine about dealer, larry salander and his troubled times. seems larry tried to hedge his bets and go for the old world works of masters, versus the koons, hirst bullshit of the day. and it seems he's paid that price. i won't go into his hardships-- suffice to say he had the guts to try to place real value (in the international commercial art world) on the works of masters like tintoretto, rafael and canaletto. it cost him. big time... of course, this is the business end of this game, so there are accusations of some sleazy actions behind the scenes. but anyway... these rich guys don't play nice. lets not kid ourselves and think he was doing this for the sake of culture (well, maybe a bit) he was looking to cash in like the rest of them. anyway, it was a good read. try to check it out...

and now, i'm gonna relax a bit...

in the end, life is good.
but much of the art isn't.

Sunday, March 23, 2008

ok, back in nyc... it's colder, but sunny. of course, my first day back i noticed that it was gonna be 86 degrees in the  valley. fine... i need the hardship. give it to me. 

so i read the jerry saltz review of the whitney biennial. as one would think, it's crap (the show, not the review)... i won't be going. the only good thing to be said is that one of the curators is good to look at.  sorry, but thats it. and i will proudly say that i've never been to a whitey biennial. actually i have-- and jason rhodes rocked it. fine... the irony here is that, years ago,  i was writing about rhodes and thinking about how much i disliked the work and at the end of the essay i realized i made him sound pretty good. thats the trick-- you might not like something, but you might think about it a bit and realize a bit more. sadly, at 41 and a veteran of the nyc art world, i know what these girls at the whitney are putting out (no pun intended).... its the same ole' same ole' that was on shop last year and the year before and the year before and i've tired of what they're selling-- long ago... it would seem they have no faith (read: understanding , or sensitivity) in painting or sculpture. fine. thats the way the world works. they play video games in their off hours and text message untold hours away into nothingness, waiting for the next career move.  to each their own.  as for the work, it's the sameness of it all that rubs me the wrong way. sure, lets wrap a garden hose around the perimeters of the space, lets take nude, polaroid self-portraits, lets figure out cute riffs on environment and race; class and bullshit takes on what could be considered "culture (if we tried really, really hard)..." enough already. where is the art? where are the balls?and if that makes me sexist, fine, what would joan mitchell think of this crap? 

not much... 

not much at all.

but we move on. i no longer concern myself with this aspect of the art world. i will comment on  its frivolities and it's inanities and pound my chest for a sense of honor and quality. 

all well and good. 

fuck them...

Tuesday, March 18, 2008

so i made it. or so it seems now... i titled the painting, "nagoya". while i studied it, the images of that city came back to me. the first morning, walking along with my camera and map, stumbling across shinto shrines and buddist temples tucked away off alleys and side streets. the painting had this quiet, insular feel to it. i'd been sitting out there in the night, hearing the raccoons stumble through the bamboo and the painting was really talking to me. finally.

sometimes this art nonsense comes together. sometimes it even makes sense beyond the romantic...

yeah.

Monday, March 17, 2008

just in from the little studio under the orange tree... trying to pull together a horizontal piece to take down to the gallery tommorow. that would make four new pieces. we'll see... getting a painting ready for the world outside the studio is always a precarious undertaking for me-- the final adjustments, the final sanding, etc. anyway...

drove out to alta loma and spent the evening with alex couwenberg and his wife andi campagnone. after dinner we finished off the night at andi's gallery/wine bar. dba 256. a beautiful space in pomona. andi had a group show up of 6 or 7 women. and as far as the art exhibited went, a little testosterone would have gone a long way. having said that, the work of virginia katz was looking good. i first came across her work in nyc and she is an artist of a certain consistancy and inventiveness. i particularly enjoyed a suite of painted drawings. andi asked me to write the exhibition essay for the next show, a survey of the american landscape. several artists i'm not familiar with are going to be involved along with my good friend, james austin murray. but the main point of the evening was winning about $15 rolling dice on the bar and the girl who lives in the upstairs loft telling me that the only hair on her body was the hair on her head. good to know...

somehow andi made me drink a lot of belgian beer and then the waitress who served us dinner earlier in the evening came in, sat next to me and smiled.

Saturday, March 15, 2008

so, i must say, after much reflection, as far as the group show at turner gallery goes-- peter lodato is a heavyweight painter. period... in terms of scale and proportion, as well as pure paint handling-- this was good, good painting. the work was totemic and clean; epic and serious as a heart attack. i have to add- his is a work that must be seen in the flesh. digital imagery does nothing for this man; the work can drift into vapor. but live, standing there in front of it's form it becomes a very real force of nature. a few years ago i explored a very similar aesthetic. seeing lodato's efforts gave me pause enough to appreciate what i was doing and examples enough of what i was missing. any serious artist should seek out this man's work...
i guess it does work... drove to bergamot station in santa monica and checked out my buddy alex couwenberg in the group show he's in at the william turner gallery. the show, curated by peter frank had alex in there with peter lodato, larry bell, mike braden and charles arnoldi. alex's work was kick ass. in particular the piece, "guardrail", a large, thin horizontal in blue. yeah, a serious work. the matte surface created it's own light and allowed you to check out the detail and intimate workings of the piece. i was telling alex later, on the phone, while navigating 405 traffic back to the valley, that, with all the gloss, "finish fetish" action out here, so much gets lost... in any event, it was great painting, as was a large dyptich that didn't get in the show. alex said he's saving it for his upcoming st. louis show.

also checked out the ed moses show at frank lloyd gallery. pretty solid-- liquid paint laid out and spread with a trowel-- sparse, strong. ed came in for a moment or two then turned around and split before i could say hello. an enigmatic dude going strong in his 80's. god willing...

some good richard serra etchings at bobbie greenfield gallery, next door. heavy, circular works, very intense surface... it's serra, what could you expect? i would like to see some straight up drawing by the man though-- some pencil on notebook paper would be cool. maybe...

when i'm out here, it's always good to get out into the scene. tough to pull myself from the studio and the pool, however... the day after i got into LA, i went out to the secluded studio of robert kingston. i've known robert for about a decade now. his work has gone all over the spectrum, but always with a strong, intellectual resolve. in any event, the few pieces he had working were looking good. a gold piece, very rugged, was ready to be titled and wrapped. the question was which gallery would get it. and kingston pulled out a large black painting that was truely awesome. he flipped it's orientation several times and hit it a few strokes editing and adding elements here and there. it was a winner. and i gotta say, it was an honor to be there as he worked it...

so tuesday i take 3 works down to the the turner gallery and rob brander, bills director, will take some photos and take them in. i guess i'll bring back a few pieces they haven't sold. fair enough...
looking outside the blinds, it seems the rain has stopped.

good...
a rainy afternoon in LA... still not sure if this thing works. or if i do, for that matter...

Wednesday, March 12, 2008

Welcome


Hello - Welcome to Zimmermann on Art. Postings describing events in the New York and Los Angeles art worlds will be forthcoming.