Good Grief—it snowed yesterday!
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!…
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In the Studio 4/21/2013
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…
Poem: The Thing She Said to Me
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…
In the Studio 4/14/2013
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…
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…
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…
In the Studio 4/7/2013
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…
Lost Secrets of the Masters Part I
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…