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.

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...

* 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...

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...

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.

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

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.