* interesting how i find myself going for the grim profundity of black once again... that note of high seriousness, etc. zubaran, goya, valazquez-- the ground, burnt bone of animals.

add to that this new quest to reinvigorate my work with gesture and a baby and all the rest and life is just spinning at speeds that seem, at times, surreal. the crazed energized pitch of the edge that i felt hanging off the fireescape in the bronx after to much of any number of bad habits nipping (then) at my heels... and why not gesture?? there is a very valid reason work such as De Kooning and Kline resonate so with certain viewers-- that coarse, arrogantly physical statement of FACT put down on canvas. in discussion after discussion with the poetic artist robert kingston, we've hashed out the issues of the hard edge, the grid, geometry (what have you), versus the elegiac song of the painterly, or gestural... our main conclusion (if you could call it that) was that the 2 could and should intermingle to create a work of the complexity an artist should strive for given our dicey space in the continuum of art.

i'm taking this operation very deliberately. large canvases line the walls of my studio- some of them having been labored over for serveral years and drawings litter the floor of my apartment, my baby deegan held the brush for the first time on one such outing- her savage markings sharing an honesty i can only hope to come across in my own handling of material...

* the paradox of james austin murray... i've been meaning to write something along these lines for quite sometime now. i first met murray when he was a young dealer (of art). then, ditching the retail trade and focusing on his own chaotic painting, he stumbled across a brilliant melding of tight, graphic portraiture and expressionism that debuted at andrew miller's much loved and short lived L.I.C.K. Ltd. in 2001. 1 week after 9/11...

since that time a lot of paint has gone one way or another, for better or worse. of late however, murray has staggered across a growing body of work in the last year or so that is quietly reaching a fever pitch of importance. an importance that, sadly, is going too far under the radar... his monochromes (and, despite his possible protestations, that is just what they are...), black, radiant, daring in execution and sculptural implication, sit on the wall with a chip on the shoulder daring you not to lose yourself in track of a brushstroke, or the lost wisp of an edge that might round off when (seemingly) it can't, or according to some pythagarian standard, shouldn't, but does. beautifully.

at his recent open studio i had the honor of seeing 3 large scale works for the first time- 2 tryptichs and a stunning (the best nyc painting of this year???) dyptich, titled "bomb proof anchor". these paintings need to be seen and visually labored over. i'll not go into details here (besides, my glass is empty...).

not that it matters much- but i've felt for years that, as talented as murray is, he never understood that talent, or what made selections of his work so important. i don't feel that way anymore...