Review: Rublev paint
Rublev oil paint is excellent. Along with Harding, they are my choice for high-end oil paint. I’ve used Rublev oils frequently but only recently moved them into the top tier on my Oil Paint Brand Reference. I used some of their excellent lead whites over the past month and realized how fantastic this paint is.
Old Holland, I want to forgive you
I explain why I banished Old Holland from my palette in this post. Even though I rate Old Holland’s oil paint the best in my Oil Paint Reference, their prices are so absurdly high that I refuse to use them. Besides, there is plenty of reasonably-priced vendors out there, such as RGH and Blue Ridge.
Review: Utrecht oils
It’s hard for me to understand this but until this week I never used Utrecht brand oils. I’m not sure why this is. I’ve visited their shops in NYC and Cleveland and ordered plenty of other things from them. True, I was disappointed with the easel I bought from them, but that was recent and doesn’t explain
Book review: Heorot Series vol. 1 & 2
I listened to the two books in the Heorot series, The Legacy of Heorot, and Beowulf’s Children on my Audible app. The books were written by the team of Larry Niven, Jerry Pournelle, and Steve Barnes. The first book was written in 1987, the second in 1995. Although I go through periods when I read
Quick review: Brinsley Tyrrell at Busta Gallery
At first sight, I was underwhelmed by Brinsley Tyrrell’s show, Ohio Lands Forever, at Busta. The large-format pieces with their electric colors and ropey splatters struck me as gimmicky and shrill. Tyrrell’s enamel on steel technique threatened to skid out of control–obsession with process has shipwrecked many artists. But after a couple of processions around
Review: Truppe Fledermaus and the Carnival at the End of the World
The collaborative team of Nicholas Kahn and Richard Selesnick recently filled the Galleries at Cleveland State U. with posters, postcards, and photos from their magical world of speculative fiction and false history–Truppe Fledermaus and the Carnival at the End of the World. While Kahn and Selesnick’s magic realism reminds me of artists like Magritte, or
Thumbs Down: Sargent; Thumbs Up: Bouguereau
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
Non Reviews
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