miscellaneous studio moments

(click to enlarge 'em)

Continuing...

(work in progress, 4 x 6')

A show I look forward to seeing...

soon. (below, 'Ellipsis Near & Far', and detail of same...)
by Margaret Wall-Romana, at Bucheon Gallery



Read the Chronicle review by Kenneth Baker here, and see photos from opening night (scroll down) here...

East Coast studios #3: Carol Struve & Stephen Niccolls

Carol & Steve were two of our fabulous hosts during our East Coast Stay. One of their big recent projects has been fixing up the beautiful 3-story house they bought within the past year in Kingston, New York (on the Hudson River, about an hour & a half from NYC).
I hadn't seen recent work from Carol in some time, and things have changed! So it was exciting to take a tour through her portfolio of monoprints, mostly done during a fellowship at the Women's Studio Workshop (also near their home. On a rainy day later in the trip, we visited there-- very cool place.) Carol's new work is more completely abstract (earlier work had abstracted landscape forms), celebrates color and color relationships, and is very much a result of exploration & discoveries made through the print-making process. I think we all wanted to take a monoprint workshop with her by the end. (More about Carol here-- click on her name...)



STEPHEN NICCOLLS
I posted about Stephen's work here a while back, while he was having a show at the Van Brunt Gallery; but it was nice to see some of the paintings in person (funny how those little jpgs don't do a big painting justice!)
Here's one shot in his studio on the second floor of their house-- and at right are 2 paintings culled from his website where you can go to see more.

Below are a couple of his lovely, subtle, idiosyncratic gouache pieces.


We miss you guys already!
Thank you so much for conversations, tour-guiding and general hospitality!



Below: playing duelling cameras with Stephen, and L to R, Tony, Stephen, Bev & Carol, while at Bev's ... .

Painting Completion Truths

1) A painting which seems to be almost done, will always take far longer to actually complete than you anticipate.
2) Inversely (or would it be conversely?), after a long hiatus, sometimes you see that painting with suddenly new clarity, and exactly what it needs seems apparent.
3) In either case, the progress will not make for interesting blog-viewing. Alas.

East Coast Studio Visits: Beverly Floyd

I'm going to gradually be putting up some photos of some of the friends' studios we got to visit while we were away recently.

I met Bev in the years just after I got out of grad school, when we were both living in Western Mass in the early 90s.
Now she splits her time between living in Connecticut (in an amazing house she helped design) and Zurich (where her husband currently teaches).
Her paintings have long dealt with the natural world (like me she has a love of gardening, and recently completed a Master Gardener's Program), which is currently overlaid with her experience of learning German.

These pieces are all mixed media, and include printed, collaged bits, along wih beeswax-- and her (sometimes) invented birds are all inscribed with German phrases the birds might be saying. (Above she's reading the German to us).


Here are some small pieces, which were hanging in the house. And see more here at Bev's website!
Bev was getting ready for upcoming shows in a couple of places (and took us to a show that she was in nearby), and juggling the realities of maintaining studios in two countries and travelling a lot. It was great to visit with her (and see all that she's created), together with our friends Carol & Steve.


(Here's a photo of the house, and the lake view from the deck...)

On the wall today...

Hot colors. Abstract forms. Some old, some new.
What can it all mean? More later.

new painting in the UK

These three were amongst my picks from those 'short-listed' for Britain's Celeste Art Prize (the public was allowed to vote)-- called "a prize to promote painting in its widest sense". (alas, I don't think any of my people won).

history of art via amazing computer graphics

(wait for it-- it's coming!)

By someone known as 'eggman913'. There's a post about it here. Spreading across the art internet like a wildfire.

back from New York...

We're just back from our trip-- an action-backed couple of weeks (see Tony's head exploding?) We saw so much, had great visits and a great time re-connecting with folks, and covered a lot of ground in our rented Mustang.
It'll take a bit to sort out the photos and make some sense of it here. You can rest assured we'll be returning to New York, and it won't be 10 years this time!