Vuillard's The Reader

Vuillard, The Reader, 1896

Every year for the holiday my mom gets me a planner with paintings in  it.  They are from Pomegranate if you want one, which I posted about in the post below.

Anyways, I can never help myself from immediately looking through the whole year of pictures.  This 2012 edition had Vuillard's painting in it and I just adore it.  The spatial illusions that he has created through pattern here are genius!  After a few minutes of looking the whole thing levitates up and off the paper.  What I would give to see this 84 x 61 inch beauty in Paris.  A masterpiece.

I'm gathering some thoughts on pattern and piling space which are paramount to my recent paintings and I think I'll do a few posts on that coming up.  

Collage Perspectives at Swarthmore

Here is a great gallery talk with Andrea Packard, curator of Swarthmore's List Gallery. She put together such an interesting show and talks about how she selected these artists who all use aspects of representational painting to find a coherence to a medium (collage) which is naturally dissonant and fragmented.

Small Works at Rosenfeld

Coffee Through a Straw, Oil and Graphite on Panel, 2011

I am in this year's Small Works show at Rosenfeld Gallery. It's chock full of small pieces, primarily paintings but also some sculpture and ceramics. I have three pieces including the one above in the show. It goes until December 31st...stop by!

Eilif Amundsen

Here I go; giving away my secrets again. I discovered the artist Eilif Amundsen a while back and just love love love everything he does. He is the evidence that supports my feeling that white can be used in abundance and if done right (which is nearly impossible) it can make the most powerful sensation of a painting. They feel like wintry memories (I believe he's from a Scandinavian country) so I thought now was the appropriate time to put them up. I have been looking to them recently too because I am doing a painting in which the season seems to be winter.

Anyway, there is absolutely nothing written about him in English online anywhere except that he was born in 1930 so for now I (and you) will have to just go on these grainy images and hope that the work reappears somewhere soon.

Vindu, 1990

Stilleben Vindu, 2000

Ann Truitt Film

Recently I visited the Delaware Art Museum, it was a really brief and uneventful trip in general but I stumbled upon one gem. They have a small show of Anne Truitt's work called Luminosities. Just about a dozen pieces, I was quite drawn to a few works on paper but most delighted by the short film titled Ann Truitt: Working by Jem Cohen.

Confession: this may be the first movie I have watched from start to finish in a gallery, its just hard to hold my attention for a long time when I know how many other things of visual interest are around the next corner. But this video was really visually acute and seemed to match the aesthetics of Truitt's interview. It's hard to find online but worth trying to see; here are some excerpts from it on PBS's website and I have put in a few stills here.