In the summer before third grade, we moved to a small town far from Dayton. The ramshackle house we rented was across the street from the public library. With its pink-marble columns, the library seemed to exist in another world. I began spending all of my free time there. My frequent visits to the library…
Category: Uncategorized
Books, Reviews, Uncategorized
David Hickey’s Air Guitar
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Do you like to read? Me, I’ve always been a voracious reader. Like other autodidacts, I let my interests take me where it will–I read what I damn well please. Lately, I’ve been reading a lot of art theory (Foucault, Panofsky, Derrida, Johnson) and criticism, which brings me to Hickey. I recently finished two of…
Artists, Cleveland, Galleries, Uncategorized
Carl Gaertner
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Yesterday was a lucky day–I discovered an artist new to me: Carl Gaertner (1898-1952). Gaertner’s reputation is almost entirely local to Cleveland, as Robert Smith‘s is confined to Dayton. Gaertner was born in Cleveland and lived in and around there until his death. He taught for many years at the Cleveland Institute of Art. The Bonfoey Gallery…
Bio, Shop Talk, Tips and Studies, Uncategorized
Love Everything About It
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I love everything about art making. This has always been the case for me, but when I was young I was more impatient. I also had an elevated view about the role of artistes. As a consequence, I was sometimes careless with my equipment. Brushes could remain brush-down in turpentine for days–horror!–until I got around…
Aside
I missed the Toledo Art Museum’s Manet exhibition. As consultation I am reading Foucault’s “Manet and the Object of Painting.”
Shop Talk, Tips and Studies, Uncategorized
White Paint–in Praise of Lead
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The most important color–by far–is white. White oil paint comes in three flavors: Zinc white (zinc oxide, PW4, usually called Chinese White when used in watercolors). Although known from ancient times, its common usage is relatively modern, dating from the 18th century when it was developed as a replacement for lead white, which was long known to be…
Artists, Paintings, Reviews, Thumbs-Up-Down, Uncategorized
Thumbs-up: Bonnard; Thumbs-sideways:Vuillard
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Vuillard Have you dated someone whose online profile scored highly, only to be disappointed upon meeting her/him? I’ve never used an online dating service (my wife has strong opinions on this subject), but my relationship with Vuillard feels like a disappointing blind date. At different times I’ve studied him closely. He has a beguiling profile filled with attributes I admire: he’s…
Shop Talk, Uncategorized
Oil Paint Brand Ratings
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I’ve used oils paints from almost every producer known to man, or at least those known in the US. This photo shows my two paint cabinets. The one on the left has tubes of blue, green, yellow, and earth red. The top-drawer, for example, contains only yellows. The barely-visible cabinet on the right contains reds, whites,…