Fall Bouquets

Gouache on Paper

Gouache on Paper, 2009

Gouache on Paper, 2010

Gouache on Paper, 2010

I am so delighted by these works on paper by Sarah Armstrong-Jones. They feel so much like dying autumn foliage and the shapes and colors I have been looking at as I walk to work the last few weeks. I would love to see these pieces in person, but for now I'll have to settle for her gallery's online images. Happy Thanksgiving!

Interesting Sunday Find

I like the website mutualart.com which has a huge database of artists' works that aren't always otherwise available online. I found some nice paintings of Paul Wonner's I had never seen anywhere else. So here I share those with you...

Chelsea, November 2011

Below is a visual summary of the best of what I saw in Chelsea this weekend. So many good shows linked for me by ambitious nature, attention to fortunate events found in process and satisfying a personal need for altering materials and physically creating artworks.

Matt Blackwell at Edward Thorp, Tour and Trance (fabulous)

Elizabeth O'Reilly at George Billis, Nightfall, Union Street Bridge (closed Saturday but her collages will be on view through mid December at Swarthmore's List Gallery)

Josephine Halvorson at Sikkema Jenkins, Cracked Back, (interesting interview with her in the Brooklyn Rail this month)

Matthew Farina Recent Collages at The Painting Center

Ruth Miller at Lohin Geduld, Enamel Jug Motif (she is a member of Zeuxis, a fabulous still life painters' association)

And the great Joan Mitchell, Last Paintings at Cheim & Read

PAINT!

Please come to my opening tomorrow night! It is at the Main Line Art Center in Haverford and is this year's Betsey Meyer Memorial Exhibition. Bill Scott selected 18 young, emerging Philadelphia artists, all painters and printmakers. The reception is from 6-9pm on the 4th (tomorrow) and the show will be up until November 23rd. I am showing two pieces, one is a very large piece for me which I have never put online. I think it's going to be a good time...so come!

Degas at the MFA

Degas Seated, 1895 (this photo is in the show)

There is a fabulous little show up at the MFA Boston. I got the chance to see it because I am in New England for the week for work and it was quite a bonus. The show is Degas and the Nude and its just a few rooms of primarily works on paper.

It was really great because Degas is one of the larger than life greats for me who was pretty untouchable. In person, I have mainly only seen large paintings of dancers or one drawing here or there, so he was never a personal connection before.

Getting to see so many small works, sketches, and monotypes completely changed that. The works were really stunning, direct and process based. I was really blown away by th

e monotypes; such complex yet simple compositions, black and white and tender but powerful. Took me forever to find even this crappy image online too so try to see the show!

Degas, Woman Drying her Feet (my favorite)

An Artist on the Awkwardness that is F. Porter

Fairfield Porter, Under the Elms 1971

By this point you are probably aware that I love Porter.

However, I've never had my feelings about him so succinctly expressed as Dan O'Connor did in a recent interview on Painting Perceptions. O'Connor is a recent MFA grad of PAFA and although his work is very impressive to me in ways, I think it is what he aspires to in Porter that unites our thinking as artists.

He says; " I am continually trying to introduce new ideas or ways of seeing into the paintings. A few months ago, I read a little catalog from a Diebenkorn exhibit where he mentions learning about the importance of whimsy from the paintings of Matisse. This has proved to captivate me for a while. I’ve always thought on whimsy as a sort of heavy-handedness or awkwardness that permeates through some paintings, but have started to see it now as something that could potentially relate a real, palpable truth about vision. It seems to present itself in limitless ways; the way you hold your brush, apply paint, stand, look, question. This playful manner of observing, I think, speaks loudly about the painter and the subject, while still providing a satiated, fully resolved, believable painting. Fairfield Porter seemed to have it."

Awesomely put.

Dan O'Connor, Dear God, Thank you For Friends, 2009