Yep. We had a twenty-minute white-out squall yesterday morning, April 20th! Granted, all the snow was gone by the afternoon, but this is the latest I remember it snowing. And today it’s windy and COLD! Even Buddy, our Silky Terrier, was hesitant to approach the shore. Here he is screwing up his courage to walk…
Bio, Paintings, Studio Corner, Uncategorized, Vermilion, OH
In the Studio 4/21/2013
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Some of today’s work. The large painting (5′ x 6′) is titled ‘Atlantic City I.’ My wife is from New Jersey and she used to live and work in Atlantic City, so I’ve spent time there. I have a lot of paintings about Atlantic City and a number of others planned. The painting of the…
Bio, Fiction
Poem: The Thing She Said to Me
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The Thing She Said to Me The poets and rockers didn’t go beyond Avenue A, where the poverty was unromantic. My fifth-floor walk-up (Ave. C and 9th) looked over the rooftops of Manhattan, to the sea beyond. Floating above the world, the carnival-lit World Trade Center tethered me every night. Around the corner, the heartless barmaid…
Bio, Paintings, Studio Corner, Uncategorized, Vermilion, OH
In the Studio 4/14/2013
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Some of today’s work: ‘Grandfather’ is large by my recent standards–40″ x 60″. The drawing was transferred using a grid. When the drawing was done, I inked it, that is, I went over it with India ink. Then I covered the surface with an thin tone of raw umber and lead white. For larger paintings…
Art Museums, Artists, Paintings, Reviews, Thumbs-Up-Down
Thumbs Down: Sargent; Thumbs Up: Bouguereau
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John Singer Sargent and William-Adolphe Bouguereau are not normally considered together, yet their careers overlapped for several decades. In the ‘Undergrad’s Giant Book of Art History’ Sargent is counted among the progressives, while Bouguereau is thrown in with the anti-progressives–history’s losers (according to the Giant Book). Indeed, in many fables in the ‘Undergrad’s Giant Book of…
Bio, Reviews, Thumbs-Up-Down
Non Reviews
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I was going to title this post ‘negative reviews’ referring to non-reviews—shows I’ve visited that did not speak to me, and so no reviews were forthcoming. Silence as a review, so to speak. But, of course, readers have no way of knowing what exhibitions I attend and pass by without comment. Visiting an exhibition without…
Bio, Paintings, Studio Corner, Uncategorized, Vermilion, OH
In the Studio 4/7/2013
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Here is a batch of some recent work. The large painting–‘The Conversation’–is 66″ high. It’s not far from being finished (knock wood). The smaller paintings are Betty Jane paintings, that is, paintings of people aboard my boat–The Betty Jane. They are also examples of paintings on canvas board. Treated properly, canvas board can be as…
Shop Talk, Tips and Studies, Uncategorized
Lost Secrets of the Masters Part I
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We are in the midst of a surging revival of interest in historical painting methods. More is written on the topic each day. Many authors point to received experts (Eastlake and Doerner to name just two—my own threadbare copies are much-thumbed) and claim to have rediscovered or reinvented long-lost methods. The pursuit of the ‘lost…