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...