Really big art
Bronze Colossus of Constantine, 4th century Roman. Not the one you expected, was it? Having finished the first of my seven large (48X36) paintings for my upcoming show at Roberts Wesleyan, I’ve been thinking about why people are motivated to make really big art. Roman emperors erected colossi of themselves to publicly declare their omnipotence. …
What work are we doing here?
Getting there. It should be done tomorrow, I swear. I’ve been dogged by illness this whole winter, but by the grace of God something is coming together for my upcoming show at the Davison Gallery at Roberts Wesleyan. I promised the gallery director a postcard image this week, and a postcard image she shall have. …
Our inheritance
My great-grandfather’s landscape design portfolio, done in his late teens. On Friday I learned that I have a genetic mutation. My doctor gave me an assignment: to flesh out my vague family history with real names, dates, and medical diagnoses—in short, to create a pedigree for myself. Each of us carries two separate copies of …
Psychology as art
When I was a teenager, my father would occasionally give young men who came visiting a psychological profile called the House-Tree-Person (HTP). This was slightly less weird than it seemed, since Dad was both a psychologist and an artist. The results were usually quite prescient. He pointed out the priapism in one guy’s drawings; frustrated …
Even great painters have bad days
The Harlot of Jericho and the Two Spies, c. 1896-1902, by James Jacques Joseph Tissot This morning I came across Tissot’s The Harlot of Jericho and the Two Spies, above. Tissot was a fine painter, but one has to wonder what he was thinking to portray Rahab as a man in drag, with a 5 o’clock …