Accountability
Underpainting of Northern Lights. Got a lot of work to do here before it’s intelligible. On January 1, I made a pact with a friend to periodically check up on our progress toward our 2014 goals. Mine were: Regain where I was in October in terms of health and work; Finish and hang my show …
Art is what’s left when you take all the function out
One of the biggest quality-of-life problems in Western New York cities is the number of abandoned houses. The city in which I live (Rochester) aggressively destroys them. About five years ago, Buffalo launched a program to tear thousands of them down. At $16,000-20,000 a clip, these demolition programs put a strain on already-diminishing tax bases. …
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Painting with blood and guts
Marc Quinn’s Alison Lapper Pregnant is a beautiful, difficult work that would not have been possible before the modern era. One of my children works with severely handicapped adults. His duties include stopping clients from smearing feces on the walls. These non-verbal, intellectually-broken adults share a means of communication with some of the more rarified intellects in …
Painting the absurd
Still life by Sandy Quang. About 18X24, oil on canvas. I’ve had several students painting and drawing a sprawling still life over the last few weeks. Sandy Quang has done a bang-up job with it. Sandy has a BFA from Pratt and is finishing her MA from Hunter College, so I must share some credit …
I do love me a good conspiracy theory
January, from the fresco cycle Cycle of the Months by the Bohemian master Venceslao, c. 1400, in Trento. A Facebook friend posted a photo of a snowball he’d attempted to melt with a lighter. Turns out he was responding to a conspiracy theory that the stuff that fell over Atlanta wasn’t real snow. (It’s pretty exhaustively debunked …