Saturday, November 20, 2010

...and there is a glass of scotch.

and if nobody else likes that, at least you do.
there is a newly fabricated, $300 crate, paintings wrapped and packed into; large canvases on the walls getting worked and numerous smaller pieces-- in brooklyn and manhattan working spaces, getting touched up and done... jazz in the background: coltrane, miles, mojo mancini... the light is harsh in brooklyn around 3pm-- the west-facing windows give no relief... and you wonder what really is going on in this moment. a moment when you may or may not be putting paint down-- but are, for sure, making art. you wonder about this and nod your head and feel like something is happening here. something real and something good. something as close as it should be to what it is that you as an artist should be doing.

and you think about that for a second or 2, maybe smile and get on with it.

all of it...

Wednesday, November 10, 2010

I took a break from the studio for an hour to sit in the local hip bar surrounded by these fey art school kids... and whatever it happened to be that they were saying: our future creators.

and it dawned on me-- thats whats wrong with the art world...

Tuesday, November 9, 2010

these writings seem to get few and farther between... i guess thats a good thing, in that work in the studio is getting done, as opposed to sitting with coffee and a laptop-- typing away.

* the chelsea gallery scene has been interesting of late. actually having seen some very strong painting in the last few weeks, i'm coming to the conclusion that the world may be reaching it's fill of digital tomfoolery and the like... maybe not, but it's a good thought to think.

* speaking of chelsea, the brice marden shows at matthew marks should not be missed. the large paintings in the "letters" show are simply and stoically, beautiful. i was very pleased to find that the palette is of soft, restricted, earthy tones-- the approach quite painterly. and i gotta say, the borders, or margins (to my eye) really push the compostion forward and, obviously, give it some sense of order, outside the gestural... the smaller show next door of earlier work is equal in it's pleasures, but from the other side of things. here was marden as a young artist, dealing with his influences and fighting through it. but, god damn, what a fight it was... these paintings are rugged as hell and, given the small size (indeed, scale) all the more physically vigorous.

art of this quality makes me feel good to live in manhattan and, that said, here in manhattan, we're lucky enough (as we should be) to have one of the most important (to my mind) shows to be put together in, well, quite a while. MOMA's Ab-Ex show is as purely beautiful and important (on many levels) as one could wish. all the greats are there-- the artists and the works-- and some of the lesser known artists as well-- alfred leslie, grace hartigan and, from the earlier years, bradley walker tomlin. in some instances, artists are afforded their own gallery: the newman offerings are particularly strong-- onement 1, white fire, abraham and, of course, vir heroicus sublimis... to this day, i look at vir heroicus and i shake my head at what newman was able to accomplish in his solitude. the space he created was one where the optic takes on the physical-- you look into this work and you just know that there is importance to what we, as painters, strive for... no matter how far we fall from attaining anything at all-- our efforts are worthwhile, in and of themselves.

in the morning, i'll meet with the painter, pat lipsky, and we'll take all this in together. something to look forward to...

as far as the studio goes, it's been a very productive time. right now i'm getting work ready for a january 15th solo show at 210 gallery in brooklyn and getting ready to crate up work to ship to paia contemporary in maui... life is good. sometimes it's better.

Wednesday, July 14, 2010

managed to make the reception for the matisse exhibit at MOMA. the beautiful people and those that fund them were out in force and the booze was free and the frankenthaler piece (chairman of the board) looked better than any number of sunsets, next to rodin's Balzac... interesting to me to muse on the helen F. on the night of the biggest matisse show in years... the color, the daring form. it's all there. and on and on...

but this should be about henri- not helen F. or ocean park or anything else, picasso included.

over the years, i've come to grips how much matisse has meant to me and my own work. initially, much of the influence was, perhaps, second hand. but his is an influence that radiates more now, in this post-post-modern era-- the re-working, the process, the energy...

suffice to say that, great as picasso was, matisse is (to my eye) the father of what we dare to achieve today in this world of art.

he dared to find beauty in the vast space that became newman and rothko and serra...

Friday, June 18, 2010

* the new large piece has been cut down a bit in size and proportion... thats not a bad thing-- just my studio reality-- a matter of real estate, if you will... having rearranged the studio and measured, etc, it looks like this new work will measure about 70"x 124"... fine. i also have stretchers set up that measure 60"x84" and 45"x84", so this sweeping landscape evoking space i've been dreaming up is now (more or less) ready to go... still working on some of the smaller (24x24) pieces, but today will (largely) be spent stretching canvas... another question: how to fully exploit exposed, unprimed (raw) canvas? i think of newman's examples in the stations of the cross suite and that raw canvas created a stunning contrast... yeah. it will be an interesting day...

* tuesday night i checked out a reading by novelist francis levy at the writer's room. you never know what you'll get when a writer steps up the the microphone- but, as i suspected, levy (reading from his upcoming novel, Seven Days in Rio) delivered. his is a literature born out of a stifling intellectual curiosity and funny as hell... his language is at once poetic and vulgar, feverish and refined. i also had the extreme pleasure of reading his essay in the spring edition of American Imago, recounting his 29 years of psychoanalysis with a "Dr. S." not having engaged in such pursuits (being somewhat content with my psychic shortcomings...), outside of having read some of freud and jung, i was moving in uncharted territory, but the sheer weight of meaning in levy's prose and his insatiable sincerity made for a candid, beautiful read.

* i've been re-reading phoebe hoban's biography of jean-michel basquiat on the subway, to and from the studio of late. it's been, perhaps, 12 years since i first purchased and read this book... on this second reading, 12 years older, though probably not wiser, i'm finding her premise (more or less, that basquiat was a visionary naif, martyred within an artworld run amok) just this side of ludicrous. lets be frank-- a young artist is given space, materials and wads of cash and cache'. not to mention exhibitions, catalogs, the attention, he so obviously desired and... he's a martyr?? exploited??? rubbish... he was a young dude who couldn't turn off a drug problem, so he didn't have the time to really become the artist he, perhaps, could have become. thats all. nothing more and nothing less...

Wednesday, June 9, 2010

life is short. so, perhaps, paintings should be big... in the next day or so, i'm going to staple up to the wall a canvas, roughly 6 foot by 15 feet. i was going to go whole hog and go for 18 feet, but realized i might run out of wall... fair enough. 6 by 15 feet- gorgeous proportions and (excluding the installation i did in '05 at POST at 11'x43' on the walls) the largest work i've yet attempted.
there is the seduction of quixotic adventure in the offing here. this is exciting on such base and purile levels. but exciting it is...

i'm a very physical painter. canvases (and their supports) are put up and taken down to be laid out on the floor for pouring and the loaded slapping of housepainting brushes, bought at the hardware store. orientations shift day to day- minute to minute. this will be a very different endeavor. the canvas, firmly stapled to the wall, will become a wall itself. part of the challenge will be to deal with this fact- to face the "wall" and it's reality.

newman loved to pontificate that it wasn't size he was after, but scale. well, yeah... that sounds good and indeed, that is part of the enterprise. but size is an undeniable factor and i'm interested in seeing where that takes me and where it takes this work.

for good or ill...

Wednesday, June 2, 2010

a late start to getting out the door to the studio... so, yeah, dennis hopper and louise bourgeois dead and now we can add peter orlovsky to the list of the gone and remembered. sadly, very little has been mentioned thus far on his passing. in a way, thats fitting, given his life story. if orlovsky is remembered at all, he is remembered for many things- his gentle soul, his empathy and his 3 decade relationship with allen ginsberg. you can add to that, his madness and the sparse body of work that is his poetry, maybe in that order... like all the Beats, his output was spotty on quality and heavy and hard with sentiment and feeling. but as with most of the Beats, there was true beauty to be found. if you can find his piece,"frist poem" (misspelled, as much of his writing was...), read it a few times and then meditate on it. it's a golden, lyrical work-- as strong as anything written by his more celebrated contemporaries.

2 weeks ago i was staying in north beach, san francisco, walking the same streets and hanging in vesuvio's and city lights and remembering these poets and freaks who gave me so much as a much younger man... in 1991 (or thereabouts, it's a bit of a haze...), i met peter, gregory corso and ginsberg at a reading and book signing. corso was crazed and mumbling, ginsberg carried himself as a stoned academic (fitting) and peter sat smiling, cinematically handsome-- as i recall, now and then patting corso on his back, as if to placate and mellow out the youngest of the Beats-- his hair grey and uncombed, sadly incoherent.

as a young-ish poet, trying to establish myself and publishing for the first time, it was a heady, tragi-comic evening... but encounters with true poetry sometimes are.

Tuesday, June 1, 2010

dennis hopper and louise bourgeois dead-- a day apart. thats as much as i have to say right now...

Wednesday, May 12, 2010

so, once again, the long lost writings... strange how easy it is to get away from the word these days. i remember the room in harlem where i would start the days with 4 or 5 hours of writing. i guess that energy is elsewhere, for good or ill... it has been a time of art, confusion, fun, energy, travel, pain, etc. basically- life. fair enough...

* chelsea has been a madhouse. the streets packed with the real and the hopefuls, the wasted and the sad, the rich and the wish they were. there has been some strong painting out there- most notably the donald baechelor show a month or 2 back at cheim reade. just a truely incredible scene, to start with, not to mention the fact that, to my eye, this was the best work of his career. it must be easy to get complacent at a certain point for an artist of success and wealth. it could, perhaps, be inevitable. but here, baechelor laid it out and got down... the familiar motifs were there-- the beach ball, the flower, but it was the handling of the paint that mattered most. that and the beautiful detritus of a ground of drop clothes. my god, yes. there are shows that make you proud to be in this game-- this was one of them. no doubt... no doubt at all.

* another big point in the recent scene was jay kelly at jim kempner fine art. kelly's last few shows have been stellar and then, last year, he added sculpture to the mix and brought things to another level. kelly's work has been based on a tough, rugged line, a sense of material and fine taste in what is before him. with the sculptural work, this holds true, but comes around a corner in the beautiful way he brings his vision to the 3rd dimension in a seamless transition.

* and then there is the paige williams piece i actually purchased, from her show at blank space: great color, great line... and i can't wait to hang it. when i saw it, there was that shock that you rarely get, but always hope for.

* a thought i've been thinking: at what point did the handling of paint, or, indeed, the application of paint (or medium) become (almost) more important than the composition of a painting?? is this even accurate? relevant?

* finishing a commissioned painting for the DC Four Seasons Hotel. they also bought 2 drawings... this is, obviously, a good thing. at the same time, trying to nail down a few new pieces for the san francisco fine art fair, once again, graciously, with andi campognone projects. these are the times that come far too infrequently, and yet, when they do, it's so hard to enjoy them, given the reality of trying to make it happen.

that could be the real challenge-- to find that space, that moment to relish being an artist.


Thursday, April 1, 2010

couldn't make it to the brooklyn studio, so (oddly enough) instead of pounding beers at the mcmanus tavern, i cruised the galleries...

* jill moser at lennon, weinberg is a great show by an under-appreciated painter. moser has been around and has been consistantly strong in her work of line and gesture. in the new work she's working the color more and is (perhaps) a bit more rugged in her approach... i do miss that singular blue of her last show however...

* the late, larry zox at stephen haller gallery: the later painting doesn't work for my eye, but the earlier geometrics are incredible. so much great and near-great painting came out of the late '60's and early '70's-- what a period... what a time to be young and making art. i've mentioned before the names that haunt me that i've never heard of-- those unknown talents who labored and loved and brought it on in nameless studios around manhattan about the time i was learning to crawl... and then there are those whose names we know but whose work we should know so much more of: when does the pat lipsky retrospective come?? good question, that...

* i was reading "the screaming pope," the blog of poet/novelist, francis levy the other day and he mentioned "in the belly of the beast," by jack (henry?) abbott... today, in the dojo locker room as levy and i prepared to spar, i mentioned to him that i had first read abbott's book when i was about 12, (maybe older, who knows??) and that it contributed to my misbegotten youth (i added dostoyevsky to the list of influences...).

abbott's life and work was what sartre and camus had pontificated on, writ large and set in a most visceral reality. this was not theory, or cafe philosophy-- this was fact-- real violence, real bars, real fear, real blood and real tragedy...

of course, it took an american (mailer) to try to write his way around all that reality, for good or ill...

* an afternoon spent buying drawing supplies for a spring and summer of working on the terrace...
this will be a very new experience, indeed...



Saturday, March 27, 2010

so, yeah, chelsea...

* you get the list and you hit the streets between 10th and 11th and just hope that something reaches out and grabs the eye. gallery after gallery, plastic cup of wine after plastic cup of wine. but, now and then, something hits: maureen mcquillan at mckenzie fine art has a great show of drawing and drawing "inspired" photos. her fascination is with the line-- in all it's circuitous frenzy... as far as chelsea goes right now, there are a handful of galleries you can (somewhat) count on to exhibit strong works on canvas and or paper-- mckenzie is, for sure, one of them...

* as always, there is a sameness to the "alternative" media, an academicism that chokes on it's own self-referential wit... best of all of, they have their own martyr: the de menil kid who overdosed 'cause he could afford to. like the song says-- "it's so easy..."


* had a good studio visit with kathy markel on wed. she left with 4 20x20's to hang in her new bridgehampton space (soon to open?). it was good hanging and talking with her. novros' name came up and a few other cats from the '70's...

after she left i got back to work. feeling a little better and a little stronger...




Thursday, March 25, 2010

for as long as we've been smearing paint on a surface, it's indeed rare to come across a young artist who (perhaps) labors over work that could be called singular. rare, but possible-- as exampled by alex couwenberg these last 10 years or so.

i'd like to think that the act of painting is one of discovery and daring. you can toss triumph, fear, loss, destruction, etc, into the mix as well... couwenberg toils along (as we all do) and he brings it together in a fresh, invigorating art. in doing so, he elevates this ancient form of communication that we humbly and passionately embrace...

his exhibition at Markel Fine Arts should not be missed.

Friday, March 5, 2010

sitting here in the andi campognone booth at the red dot fair... happy with the work i've got here though no sales as yet... thats cool. the reception last night was a good time although they managed to run out of beer and we were left with a choice of brandy or straight gin... indeed. fortunately the artist james austin murray went for beers and the party continued...

afterwards stopped by gary snyder project space for the john griefen show... griefen is one of the truely heroic painters at work in nyc today. his monochromes have a meaty, physical feel thats at once lyrical and wholly masculine. a formidable colorist, he moves between high octane and soft smoky tonalities with ease...

right now a few people are cruising the red dot... slow scene. earlier in the day i did the armory with the lovely erica, andi's assistant, and was amused to note how utterly (and predictably) bogus the contemporary art was... no real point in going into it, but yeah... the modern wing was truely inspirational-- particularly some great work by sam francis and norman blum-- but the best that could be said of the contemporary wing was that there was champagne to be had for $16 a shot...

Monday, March 1, 2010

a lot of life since any writing here...almost too much life.

as for art (as opposed to life) i'm ready for the red dot fair... I'll 3 new pieces with andi campognone projects, out of pomona california. new work seeing the light of day is a blessing that is often taken for granted. not this time.



i'll keep this short for now (if anyone is out there) but i'm back on it...