If you see one gallery show, walking the fetid concrete of Chelsea, see "UNLIMITED POTENTIAL", at Lyons Wier Gallery, curated by the powerful James Austin Murray. I'm honored to be included in this exhibition, alongside some amazing artists- James Little, Alex Couwenberg, Jeffrey Cortland Jones, Gayle Ruskin, Suzanne Laura Kammin, Jeff Muhs and Christopher Rico to name just a few.

It's a solid curatorial effort and a beautiful installation. If you manage to make your way to another gallery, hit Robert Miller and allow yourself to be blown away by a fantastic, truly epic offering of very historical work-- most notably 2 monster paintings, among the best of the last century-- bar none, by Lee Krasner.

I will be very honest and put down in print that I always felt Krasner was overrated.

Nope.

Maybe I'm a fool (not the first time that thought came to me), or I just hadn't seen enough of her work live-- living in the light before me. But from what I had seen, it didn't seem to cut it-- it couldn't hold with the masters and heroes...

This of course brings me back to the days of touring the galleries with Ruth Kligman. My friend and former owner of L.I.C.K Ltd. Fine Art, Andrew Miller, was representing Ruth in her quest to authenticate and/or sell a work that has since been titled, "Red, Black & and Silver". Ruth was the woman who had once been young enough to survive a certain night with Pollock in the Hamptons with a large car and belly full of booze, 8.11.56, to be exact. Her friend, Edith Metzger was not so lucky.

The aging Ruth I met was fond of flowing black robes and large hats. She lived in Franz Kline's former space on 14th street (she got around...), the walls posted with black and white photos of Ruth with various mid-century titans. In the bedroom, over the bureau, was the modestly scaled work that seemed consistent with Pollock's technique and graphic vocabulary. She claimed it was the last painting he created. It was unsigned. It was, as one might imagine, not valid in the eyes of the Pollock/Krasner Foundation and never authenticated.

"She would never allow it," Ruth said...

There has since been well documented forensic discoveries, that could lead one to believe that, in fact, the work is genuine. Perhaps. Perhaps not... Either way, Ruth isn't around to enjoy the party and neither is Lee Krasner.

But all of that is in the past...

I don't have the titles (I'm not a journalist) but the work speaks for itself if you just get there. In one piece Krasner stakes her claim to the formal aesthetic legacy of her man, Jackson, broadening it in fact- taking it to a place he never had the chance to... Frankenthaler got that medal, but that was probably based on her looks, Clem and the fact that her canvas was laying down on the studio floor. Its seems nobody noticed the "Pollock Widow" kicking ass and taking names in Springs, bearing the grief and horror of memory...

With a buoyant, dare I say, optimistic painting, Krasner nails a legit, late-twentieth century take on Matisse-- and blasts it into very personal and intimate space that (to my eye) no artist of her age went to...

It's a group show at Robert Miller. It's nothing but quality. Historic Quality... Paul Jenkins looks good. Milton Resnick is powerful- looking like Milton Resnick, but it's Krasner that will forever stay with me. And I mean forever. I've seen a shit load of art around the world and I've read my Kant and I know when a painting works and when it falls apart. I've wept in the Van Gogh Museum and I've slept under a Hermann Nitsch. I guess that by this time I can call a spade a spade and a great painting a great painting.

Krasner nailed down great work. Maybe it's only these 2 paintings that moved me so, maybe not. But if thats it-- it's enough...

Theres nothing more exciting than being proven wrong. I will now forever hold Krasner up with the giants. I think her time and proficiency came late and perhaps, not often. But when it came, it came with a cry to callous sinew and bone. Harsh, immediate and most importantly, honest...

"Devouring time, blunt thou the lions paws."
           William Shakespeare, Sonnet 19

In and of itself, aging is not a bad thing. I've grown somewhat amused by the vagaries and delicate intrusions of it's practice-- fighting them all the way. I've been admonished, harshly, yet not unjustly, by my Wife, Friends and Parents to ease into the silk of what Dylan Thomas so beautifully termed, "that good night".

Yet, of course, I cannot go silently...

There is a life lived vital and there is a life lived vicariously. There are fighters and there are spectators. There is the arena and there is the sofa... I've added weight to my bench press and dropped it on my deadlift only to preserve technique. And my back... A concession, perhaps, to age, though I would prefer to think it a concession to the more mobile aspects of my physical life- not to mention the flights of stairs I climb to my studio and the hoisting of 7 foot canvases to the screws in the paint smeared wall...

I've dealt with 5 days on crutches. Five days bereft of paint, iron, or the joy of picking up my daughter. 5 hard days... A few of them hopeless.

After my Doctor examined the MRI he concluded that there were medial and lateral tears of the meniscus and that my ACL was, variously,  "...a lump of snot," and/or "gone..."

I will not strive for personal bests in the squat and deadlift, though they will haunt me-- mocking me with low weight and feeble results. But I've managed the stress of harsher demons, so I'll shed the ghosts of a bar loaded with plates and enjoy the delicacies of fast twitch fibers to earn my protein.

As a young Poet, I dreamed that I wanted to live my life as a poem. Now, as a middle-aged painter, I seem to be living life as a vigorously brushed painting- smudged, layered and perhaps a bit too heavy handed for it's own good. As an artist, I've always allowed myself to enjoy the back-roads to a painting-- the shift and questioning. the moments of utter loss and glowing joy... Romantic and perhaps nonsensical?

Yes...

But I wear those colors proudly.

As proudly as I wear my scars...