Desert Time. Scenes From a Lapsed Blogger

Flyer for "Lost," Anonymous was a Vlog, 2018

Video Still, "Cloaked," Anonymous was a Vlog, 2018

Video Still, "Nature Girl," Anonymous was a Vlog, 2018

Desert Time. It's a real thing. I believe it means something along the lines of, "eventually." Since moving out of LA, I've been told on more than one occasion I'm "so professional." Usually this would be a complement, possibly even a side-effect of being in a career which requires one to be able to show up, make work and deliver shit by certain dates without being a total spaz. But hey, it's 2018 and enough of you sat the 2016 election out, and by sitting that out, I mean, "but her emails"— that I'm constantly negotiating what constitutes a sense of professionalism these days. Before Desert Time, there was The Slower Pace of the South.

I'm learning to unwind a little out here, but not really. This summer was unbearably hot. As a result of not being able to lift a finger for fear of heat exhaustion and outright lethargy, I began a vlog. Vlogging has been on my bucket list for a while. It's a rabbit hole of research for sure, but after having a conversation with an artist friend, I was inspired, and thus the first episode dropped mid-summer, July 5th, I believe. I only say 'dropped' becuase all the hipsters say dropped. What really happened was that I uploaded a low-res .mp4 to my YouTube account, mahvideo1000. The account name was inspired by Ursala 1000 back in the late 90s. File under Geek101.

The goal was and still is 52 episodes.  I'm not making the weekly quota, but as the Celestial Deity of Video Art and DIY Video Tutorials as my witness,  I'll get those 52 episodes done by next summer-ish. I'm at 12 eps now. September and October were a bit of a wash. I took on some freelance work—priorities and all.

Link to the current playlist here. And remember. they're low-res downloads because nothing in life is totally free.

I'll be reporting back with some upcoming shows and news for 2019. It's slow, but I have been productive.

Anywhere But Here up at ShoeboxLA

1968. It Was a Beautiful Cake. No Moths, 2014

A couple of years ago, I carted a suitcase full of small paintings back to LA for a huge all-painting  group show/event I had been invited to be in. Being on the fence about where I was actually living, I was maintaining the cover that I was still an LA artist. I didn't quite feel like a move across country for reasons other than art made me a "Nashville artist" anymore than living 2 months in Holland made me a Rotterdam artist. Long story short, as the result of that work and my comrades in the City of Angels, I was recently invited to take part in a project on spot relevant to my current work.

My contribution to the ShoeboxLA's curatorial project went live on Friday.
For the full post including the essay and image, please visit,  Anywhere But Here. 

Many thanks, ShoeboxLA!

It's here. The show at John Davis Gallery opens today.

It's here. 

I am thrilled and honored to have this opportunity to show with John. The show will be on the second floor of the carriage house in the small rooms. It will consist of mostly new work, but he also selected a few of the pool and flower paintings, which is somehow apropos. 

Tomorrow marks two years since my mom passed away. She was one of the most supportive people in my life and I'm grateful for the love and appreciation of art and literature which was instilled in me at a very early age. And of course, the genetic idiosyncrasies. The gift that keeps on giving. 

Sharon Butler in town as part of NCAP's Insight? Outta Site! forum

Sharon Butler is in town this week as part of the Nashville Cultural Arts Project's (NCAP) spring 2012 Insight? Outta Site! forum. The talk was fantastic and I would have tweeted it but my rapt attention was on the dialogue. Sharon talked about her own experience with regard to how community affects the work (residencies, blogging, teaching); the significance and meaning of scale in her own work and others; the importance of writing as an alternative conceptual practice; self-motivation; the studio; the gallery system(s); DIY and taking responsibility for your career; and what I believe to be a core concept, at least with regard to my own work- how adapting one's practice (I'm on the fence about using the word, practice nowadays, but it flows grammatically) to situations in flux, not only enriches one's art and life, but also shapes the content and form of the work. There was also an amorphous thread on commodification which is always funny to me because seriously, just because a paintings hangs on a wall and fits in box, does not mean that it's some sort of direct to DVD cash cow. Ah, youth. The house was packed and the discussion lively.

The talk was held at Zeitgeist Gallery with a potluck beforehand. My birthday was yesterday and while I might appear mature, I still regard cake and icing as the reason for the season, so yes, after a full day of class, I stopped at the store, picked up eggs and a cake mix, and whipped up a chocolate cake with kickass Nutella icing. I blasted the a/c in the car and the cake cooled on the floorboard on the drive over. Iced it on site. After the discussion several of us went to a local tapas bar. Made it back to the compound before midnight, and told the dog I do it all for him. I can see the potential headrush supermoms might get from balancing a full life. My usual MO is more along the lines of: "I mixed some yellow ochre today." (That's a you-had-to-be-there reference to the more mundane aspect of blogging a painter's life with reference to Sharon talking about opening up the content of Two Coats to what it includes today.)

Through NCAP, Sharon's doing studio visits today and tomorrow with artists in the community.

And now some more link love:
I'm still relatively new to the scene here which keeps me in a beginner's mind mode, but I'm starting to run into artists I know including Adrienne Outlaw who organized the talk, Dane Carder, a painter and photographer who runs Three-Squared and who tipped me off to some sort of underground coffee dealer in the hood, (new ideas about Studio Coffee Break percolating as I write), Lain York, and the staff of Zeitgeist who are possibly eating leftover chocolate cake for breakfast and Beth Foley who I met through Kit Reuther, who I met through an old friend when I first arrived. I also met several artists at the talk, including Sharon Louden who's been a visiting artist at Vanderbilt this semester, and I ran into a few people who had Chicago and LA ties. I love the art world. It was a great evening, topped only by the fact that I've got 4 shows happening between now and June. Fifty-one is the New iPad.

To Live and Paint in LA at the Torrance Art Museum

The Torrance Art Museum Proudly presents

To Live and Paint in LA

Curated by Max Presneill and Jason Ramos
Opening reception Saturday, January 21st, 6-9 pm

A broad survey of current and emerging painting trends and talent from Los Angeles

Jonathan Apgar, Rebecca Campbell, Daniela Campins, Alika Cooper, Noah Davis, Tomory Dodge, Asad Faulwell, Jon Flack, Yvette Gellis, Iva Gueorguieva, Mary Addison Hackett, Carlson Hatton, Thomas Whittaker Kidd, Andy Kolar, Constance Mallinson, Allison Miller, John Mills, Aaron Noble, Antonio Puleo, Alison Rash, Nano Rubio, Conrad Ruiz, John Seal, Ryan Sluggett, Comora Tolliver, Chris Trueman, Miller Updegraff, Grant Vetter, Ben White 

* * * * * * * * * *

This is a wonderful roster of painters. I'm honored to be included. A catalog accompanying the show is available. 

Mary Addison Hackett

"The Walk," 2011

oil on canvas

10 x 8 inches

Report from the train car studio:

I had a super productive day in the studio yesterday. Like heightened sense of awareness productive. At first I was going to attribute this to my car being in the shop and being marooned at the studio on a freezing cold day. I was also going to attribute it to having left my glasses at home, so I was unable to check emails etc. But no. The mechanic called just after a few hours, so I retrieved my car, went home to get my glasses, shot myself up with an Americano, stopped at the art supply store on the way back to the studio to pick up white paint since I was also marooned without white paint, and painted out everything I had done to date on that painting- at which point it was looking to be a prehistoric landscape in a cave with a stripper pole to heaven. Perhaps that theme will be occur in another painting, but the scale was off this time. So when I reworked everything, the scale changed by maybe 100 and it turned into a more or less observational still life, present day. I worked until 4:30ish on only one painting, taking my grilled cheese, ff, and coffee break at 2:30 pm. The deli knows to put mustard packs in my bag. I like mustard with my fries.

I'm trying to refrain form posting these works until it's closer to the show (131 days) but I like it for reasons I am embarrassed to admit: it doesn't look like I painted it. I mean it does, given the direction of the last couple of years, but theoretically, I have eschewed having a recognizable style, because I like being uncomfortable. On the other hand, there are only so many places I'm interested in exploring/mining at present.

I'm chomping at the bit to post some recent works. I'm in one of those places where I'm really excited about them and I don't know if I've lost touch with reality.

One more thing regarding productivity. I made a playlist called Studio Repeat. It contained only a handful of songs and I played it maybe 30 times. I'm too embarrassed to tell you what the songs were.

I was so impressed with my selection of unmentionables today that I had to mention them

Something about wearing my Bulwark coveralls all day prompted me to go for plaid and chartreuse underneath, proving once again, it's what on the inside that counts.

I worked at the home studio today, out in the garage, since it wasn't flooding, sweltering or freezing. My only moment of distraction happened at the very beginning when I thought about swapping the boring but very functional Bombay Company desk in my office, for the antique writing table that's been haphazardly stored frozen in time for the last 60 years. I didn't get very far with the swap. I opened the drawer to find it untouched from 1940 something. I won't bore you with a list of all the contents, but sheet music, typing ribbon tins, a newspaper headlining a flood, and an elegant brochure and dinner menu from some fancy-pants aviation dinner event my grandfather had attended were a few things I found.

I thumbed through the contents and set them aside and then started painting. I thought about how nicely illustrated things were back them. I thought more about this and decided that photography not only attempted to kill painting, but that it was responsible for the demise of a cultured society as well. The desk needs a little TLC. Since it's a writing desk it only has two drawers. I'm not sure if that will work for me in the office, so I also considered making it a paint table by adding another 4 inches and some casters. Either way, it was too much work for a studio day. The garage is dusty. I had to scrape down the palette on my existing paint table. I found myself getting irritated with the dog hair and lint that I was inadvertently dragging around the paintings and I'm not OCD, not really. Not much. Maybe sometimes. It was a good and productive studio day.

Speaking of luxury goods, I watched Gosford Park last night, Altman's last film. I had seen it when it came out. Netflix thought I might like it and was kind enough to suggest it to me. I had forgotten how beautiful the set design was. I concentrated on the palette used throughout the film and various lighting schemes.

This painting was from a few month ago. I can't remember if I posted it or not. I've been rather scatter shot in my image posting. 

Mary Addison Hackett, Company in the Living Room, 2011

oil on linen on wood panel

I've been building my own stretchers from scratch. Nice, yes. I'm happy with them. I admit feeling content knowing I've labored over them. For the really small paintings, I experimented with making some wood panels and stretching linen over them. I think I will continue to do this. I'm trying really hard to develop some consistency. I'm rather slow to the draw on this matter. So slow, perhaps, that it might not be detectable for another 50 years.

This painting below is in progress, and the usual caveat: it was shot with my iphone in the studio.  It almost felt good to paint it. At first. And then it became difficult. When I look at it and look at the one above. I almost see the same thing, but not quite.

Mary Addison Hackett, [Not yet titled,] 2011

oil on canvas

PS. I'm thinking about going to Miami this year. Anyone else? 

Welcome Brooklyn and Thank you

Tonight ZieherSmith, a Brooklyn gallery will open a pop-up gallery in Nashville, TN. The exhibition, BNA: Brooklyn to Nashville, will present a selection of top emerging artists who work out of the borough of Brooklyn, home to the largest and most diverse concentration of art studios in the world. Though young, these artists have already been acquired by top museums and collections across the globe. They work in a variety of mediums and styles.

Featured artists include: Samuel T. Adams, Caroline Allison, Patrick Brennan, Andy Coolquit, John Copeland, Jess Fuller, Kate Gilmore, Denise Kupferschmidt, Liz Markus, Eddie Martinez, Sam Moyer, Rachel Owens, Javier Piñón, Matthew Porter, Sara Greenberger Rafferty, Mariah Robertson, Vadis Turner, Sara VanDerBeek, Chuck Webster, Wendy White.

-press release, BNA: Brooklyn to Nashville.

It's as if my message in a bottle drifted to the shores of Manhattan and an exhibition of 21st century work appeared here in Nashville.

I don't mean to whine, which is what I've secretly been doing since I landed here last summer after living the life of an expat for two decades, but it's reassuring to know that I'm not the only one that thought something was missing from the contemporary art scene in Nashville. There's been a serious void, to the point where I was beginning to worry that maybe it was the rest of the art world that was behind, so I am freaking elated that ZieherSmith has delivered a slice of the current art scene with their pop-up gallery at Icon in the Gulch. I'm also just a little dismayed that it's taken a Brooklyn (Manhattan, actually) gallery to bring this type of work to Nashville. Although most of the works in the show date 2011, some go back to 2008, but that's just to say this type of work has been showing in NYC, LA, et al., for at least a few years.

Eddie Martinez, Untitled, 2011 (photo credit: ZieherSmith)

Liz Markus, American Scream, 2011, (photo credit: ZieherSmith)

John Copeland, "Wake Me When It's Over, 2011 (photo credit: John Copeland)

Wendy White, Burger FF, 2010 (photo credit: ZieherSmith)

André Pretorius, Rich Girl Undercover  (photo credit: andrepretorius.com. This one was not in the show.)

My current favorites are John Copeland's, gushy and stoically funny portrait, Wake Me When It's Over; André Pretorius's untitled figurative paintings of skateboarders caught in a sort of filmic time-slice effect of calamity and bedazzlement; Wendy's White's airbrushed and graffiti like abstractions with hard-edged lettering on subtly-shaped canvasses, and Eddie Martinez's raw and quirky painting of what looked to be a pawn/gumball dispenser of personal iconography staring me down. The show contains over 40 works by about 20 artists, runs through the end of August, and is walking distance to my studio, and across the street from my new BFF coffee, Drew's Gravel Springs French Roast at the Turnip Truck in the Gulch, which means I'll be having coffee and taking a closer look at the show's salon wall this month.

I'll stop short of hawking The Icon's condo loft living, but I admit, I eyeball them on my way home and the vacant ground floor space would make a fabulous gallery for someone with a vision.  And thank you again ZieherSmith for bringing some contemporary art to town, especially painting. 

ZieherSmith
BNA: Brooklyn to Nashville
Pop-up show at Icon at the Gulch
Nashville

For my next trick, post I will deconstruct the regional art world in one paragraph causing both my social and professional life to disappear. 

Groups and Movements.

I came across the Stuckists a few years ago after getting an email from Detroit Mona for an exhibit called Unplugged @ Mona featuring Stella Vine.* Detroit appeared on my radar because I was in a small show in Detroit that same year. I checked out her work, saw her connection to the Stuckists and became interested in doing more research about them. I'm easily excitable. I'm not a group person, but every now and then I long to join an art group. I've been this way all my life. As a child, Christian bookstores had the same effect on me.

At the time most of my paintings were predominately abstract. What little figurative work I did was on the down low, and mostly little drawings. I drew a lot in 2005 and 2006. I just looked at my image folder. I scanned over 348 drawings from those two years. 2007 was a slow year for drawing but I did 72 paintings. I've since destroyed a lot of the drawings and a few paintings before moving. Moving under duress will do that. I left my 12-pound weights back there too, because I started freaking out about how much moving all my cargo was going to cost. Twenty-four pounds was the tipping point for me that day.

Mary Addison Hackett (me)
The Norwhal, Ogden Nash and The Parthenon, 2005,
ink on vellum

Mary Addison Hackett (me)

Untitled, 2005

 ink on vellum

What little figurative work I did was on the down low:

Mary Addison Hackett (me)
Double Portrait Self-Portrait, 2006
graphite on found stationery (modified for Internet use.)

Every now and then a figurative painting would occur.

Mary Addison Hackett
"Balloon Man," 2006 (?)
 acrylic on canvas
20" x 16"

I forgot about the Stuckists for awhile and then the other day I met Susan Constance online through a conversation with Steven LaRose and discovered she had been a Stuckist at one point. I got all excited again.

As of late, I'm pretty much 20 for 20 with their manifesto, and over the last few years have been drifting over to the whole idea of Remodernism, though I personally wasn't calling it anything. The further away from the centrifuge, the more I have in common. I'm considering starting a Nashville group. The only requirement is a founder. Perfect.

I was at the Train Car Stdio early this morning. I needed to finish my left eye.

Mary Addison Hackett
"Self-Portrait with Two Selves," 2011
oil on canvas
20 x 16 in.

* Stella Vine is an ex Stuckist.  According to wikipedia:

In June 2000, Stella Vine went to a talk given by Childish and Thomson on Stuckism and Remodernism in London.^[49] At the end of May 2001, she exhibited some of her paintings publicly for the first time in the Vote Stuckist show in Brixton, and formed The Westminster Stuckists group.^[48] On 4 June, she took part in a Stuckist demonstration in Trafalgar Square.^[49][50] By 10 July, she renamed her group The Unstuckists.^[51] In mid-August, Thomson and Vine were married.^[52] A work by her was shown in the Stuckist show in Paris, which ended in mid-November, by which time she had rejected the Stuckists,^[48] and the marriage had ended.

Long live short attention spans. 

Studio Envy, Landscape and Flow.

I forgot how exactly I came across Michael J. Abrams work, but artists, galleries and posts about the Hudson Valley have been filtering into my life lately, particularly since my trip to NY last spring. My next trip to NY will include a trip the the Hudson Valley.  I love this image of his studio and the statement about his work from Emily Amy Gallery's website. It's currently my screen saver. I figure if I look at it every day, my living room will miraculously turn into THE working studio, though I still have a couple of hurdles to overcome.

I'm not complaining about lack of space or formidable studio conditions. Somehow it's working for me. If I had a posh studio, maybe I'd sit around and eat lemon tarts from Trader Joe's all day, so maybe unconventional has been good. I think about that. Like seriously, what if the only thing I had to do was paint? Would it work? What would drive me if I had nothing to maintain?

Based upon the recent review about Leon Kossoff's cherry tree paintings and Michael Abram's landscapes of the Hudson Valley, I think I'm seeing a fantasy group exhibition develop. There's a shared sensibility having to do with Place, a specific or particular place, as opposed to a scene. And since it's a fantasy exhibition, I'll be curating myself into it. I've known people to hobnob for worse.

“Everyone has talent at twenty-five,” said Degas. “The trick is to have it at fifty.”

Better late than never in discovering a good review.

Late Spring: Leon Kossoff at Mitchell-Innes & Nash via Art Critical. Franklin Einspruch reviews the octogenarian British painter's recent show.

Leon Kossoff, Cherry Tree, Early January, 2004. Oil on board, 56 x 48-1/4 inches. Courtesy of Mitchell-Innes & Nash

May 5 to June 18, 2011
534 West 26th Street, between 10th and 11th avenues
New York City, 212 744 7400


I'm sorry to say I was within walking distance of this show and yet missed it while visiting NYC back  in May. Actually, I'm crushed. I identify with this on so many levels. 
More images via the gallery site.   

I'm doing a mini-residency today at my micro-residency.

But not really as I already had to go to the grocery store, after which I came home and prepared homemade cream of broccoli soup. Perhaps I am doing the work-study version.

This is all to say that I need unfettered think time, some time to play around. I have a solo show coming up this fall as part of the residency program, but now I hear it's loosely scheduled for October. It's hearsay at this point, but once I confirm it, I need to start thinking about a title and what to show. I've been making work of course, but residencies- for me- are about exploration. A place to experiment and let the work take on a life of its own with no agendas. This is quite different than production mode for a show which is sometimes extremely focused: the goal is to have X paintings by X date; they fall under the show title/concept of X. etc, etc. My production MO for the last 4 months since having the TC studio has been more in the line with that of a Circus Ringmaster only instead of orchestrating freak shows and trapeze acts, it's self-portraits, abstracts, plants, more pools, and some still lifes. Natch I did a wiki on ringmaster and discovered the term, "Monsieur Loyal" which is another term for the ringmaster taken from, "Anselme-Pierre Loyal (1753-1826), one of the first renowned circus personalities." After discovering Monsieur Loyal, which I prefer to pronounce as Loyale, as though I'm Vincent in Pulp Fiction explaining to Jules that in Amsterdam the Quarter Pounder is a Royale with Cheese, I started throwing Monsieur Loyale around as a possible show title. Only no one would get it. The end. God, I hate when I'm so clever that only I can understand the intricate complexity of such a fantastic title. A crying shame.

Anyway, I need to make more work. It's a rather lengthy linear space and my original idea of inviting others to participate might not be the best fit now due to the possible red tape of organizing such a show with relatively little time, especially since I'm not in charge of the space and all the exhibition details. But I'm thinking of it.

***

I was going to take it easy today at the micro-home residency and read, but I ended up working on another small self-portrait. I'm conflicted by my desire to be accurate, yet intrigued by how difficult it is to work from a mirror and keep the same pose with the same perspective for a few hours. I caught myself distorting a self-portrait on purpose this past week, or rather exaggerating some features in order to capture a particular mood, and wondering if it was too soon to break away from my self-imposed structure.  (Self-imposed structure for a self-portrait. How fitting.) Plus you know, the paint, always the seductive paint. Other times, I struggle to nail some particular feature, like the eyes for instance. I obsess over the eyes and my dark circles. I loathe the fact I can't see close-up unless I wear my glasses, so there's this ongoing battle with looking, seeing and painting—with and without my glasses. Criminy, I don't know anymore. A friend offered up some Lacanian Mirror Stage BS as a way of explaining the difficulty. I was pretty sure it's because I never studied figure drawing. But hey, I'll throw the Mirror Phase around if it helps. After grad school, you'd be surprised at how difficult it is to slip psychoanalytic theory buzzwords into your daily conversation.

Oh, and I almost forgot. "Couillarde." Picked that term up from a book on Cezanne's self-portraits. Derived from couille, and roughly translates as balls or guts.

X, A, and M: another discussion on abstraction and representation.

I'm working on a large scale painting. One that swings decidedly to the representational side of things. I'm wondering about brain activity and how I engage in the act of painting when I think I already know something. Simply put, it's oh, how shall I say this, boring, to paint the "background." Before you smirk and act like I haven't thought this through, rest assured, I have. I understand that it is not simply a "background." I understand all the fundamental and relative aspects of what I'm doing, but what I find disengaging is the struggle to keep to my plan, the one which states that this will look like that, and that will exist in some sort of known perspective, and adhere roughly to the palette and value system I have imagined ahead of time. It's not there isn't any wiggle room- it's that this a priori way of working is tedious for me. I have to take frequent breaks, but when I step back, I feel gratified differently than I do with the abstract work. Not better, not worse, just different. Maybe my OCD is not strong enough to battle the monotony of a large patch of canvas painted roughly the same color. At a smaller scale, I am engaged, perhaps due to the abstract nature of the individual brushstrokes and my proximity to the canvas. I'm wondering if abstract painting, the act of, is more of a brain-teaser. It's possible I need to paint faster and more furiouser. That might solve The Last Year In Marienbad state I find myself in when working on a large-scale representational painting.  Is it truth? Is it fiction? Didn't I do this before? Haven't I been here? I could have sworn I worked that area before. I'm here again? No, Yes. Welcome to my château.

Picture Theory: I'm also a sucker for the mundane.

Changeling (Shake-a-Pudding)

oil on linen/wood panel

We, not the royal 'we,' but the nuclear family, 'we,' had a plant that was over 100 years old. It was once in a conservatory at my grandmother's house. When NaNa came to live with us, the plant came too. At the time I recall my mom saying the plant was about 75 years old. It sat around in a large pot looking awkward and ancient. It was about 5 feet tall and spindly. Toward the end of my mother's life she neglected to water it. At one point she had been the president of her garden club. The plant always looked on the verge of death, but it usually pulled through. Finally though, it died. I was sad. For the plant, but also because my mother had let it die. Somehow she managed to save a clipping from it. A bail-out option I suppose. It sat in the Shake-a-Pudding cup for the last few years. No soil, just water. I finally repotted it. It's a nightblooming cereus. Supposedly it blooms once a year. I will care for it.

***

I once again stumbled upon this link- 1000 painters.  And once again, became overwhelmed at the copious amounts of fantastical painterly abstraction being produced today. And then thanks to my RSS feed, I came across a passage, well actually the whole post, from Henri Art Mag  that resonated with me as I continue to question my own motives more than occasionally. 

After 2 years of working small, unleashing my inner giant on large canvases felt right, though I went too far with the first one, so I backed it down and let gut instinct and inner apathy take over. I don't mean this to sound as negative and dysfunctional as it sounds. Nor when I refer to them as a Abject Abstractions am I trying to be clever and coin a sub-genre of Slacker Abstraction. It's merely a representation of how things were progressing and abject came to mind as being apropos. Indicative Abstraction might also be a useful term. Perhaps I am coining terms. 

In a recent review over at Temporary Art Review, the writer, Sarrita Hunn, makes some insightful connections to Vitamin P as a source for this type of abstract painting-which if you're an abstract painter with an internet connection it seems almost viral- and goes on to ask, "But then one must ask: Is ‘newness’ an inherently desirable trait?" She goes on to quote Barry Schwabsky for some possible answers.

Which leads me, or takes me back to the post at Henri Art Mag in which Mark Stone discusses what he's missing or not missing: "...the thing is not like the others. It may not be exemplary in the sense of the unique, it may not be “One of a Kind”, but it will be dissimilar, unfamiliar maybe. And for the moment I want to see and experience what isn’t if that makes any sense to any of you."

It does make sense which is why I keep struggling to mediate my imaginary battle with painting. New vs. Old. Old vs. New. Picture vs. Theory.

I'm still mulling over titles for these. All are 2011 and are of the 54" x 43" scale. 

Working titles include:

Card Game

Bridge 

and something having to do with a floating spirits or presence. Maybe that it's-

The Presences

Oh and a little self-promo- The Art in the Embassy Program catalog is online now as is the archive of the exhibition.  

And yes, the rumors are true, The Thack is back for a rare showing of 15 miniature paintings at the June 4th art crawl, Cummins Station, 6-9pm. And a few pieces by me as well. I hung it today and went back tonight to do lighting and sweep. Found some silver spray paint in an totally unrelated sentence and started a new painting. It's so past my bedtime. 

4.4.11 UPDATE : Oh wow. The subconscious rises. The painting in the Art in the Embassy exhibition was actually the first pool painting. I completely forgot about that. Fascinating. I should look through the archives to see what else was happening back then. No. Maybe not. It's easier than re-reading journals, but only because I think I'm the only one who knows what they say. Good times or not, it's still a document and conjures up the past. Maybe that's why painting persists. Enigmatic code embedded in a bunch of brushstrokes. No wonder many collectors don't want to know anything about the artist or what a painting means. No wonder painting sometimes strives to be meaningless.

"Swim," 2006. Mixed media on canvas. 

Culled from the interwebs...

Some quick picks from Two Coats of Paint...

 Albert York, "East Hampton," 1960, oil on canvas, about 10 x 10."

Iain Andrews, "The Eat Me," 2010, acrylic on canvas, 500 mm x 600 mm 

 Katherine Bradford, "Ferry," 2010, oil on canvas (detail). 16"x12" 

 Susanna Heller, "East River Drop," 2008, oil on canvas, 45 x 50"

http://www.twocoatsofpaint.com/2011/04/rochelle-feinstein-painting-isnt-enough.html

and some random picks from my tumbler likes...

http://nicodimgallery.com/beta/artists/adrian-ghenie/

http://boyonlife.tumblr.com/post/4643290184/erik-olson