i like it, like it, like it

Smokers, Tom Bunnell

Ruben Nusz

Jennifer Moses

Allison Miller

"Exciting Color World"*

* title of a painting by yours truly, age 3

Georgia O'Keeffe

Mark Rothko

Jules Olitski

Jules Olitski

Helen Frankenthaler

miscellany

Yevgeniya Baras

Louise Bourgeouis

Kristen Schiele

Janelle Iglesias

Alika Cooper

The Thing

My artist friend Mike said when he is painting he is always thinking about making an object. Here are some painty objects.

Peter Gallo, Good taste, which is becoming prevalent throughout Europe, was born under the blue skies of Greece... , Horton Gallery

Peter Gallo, Paint Symptoms, Horton Gallery


Peter Gallo, I'm Not Dead Yet, Horton Gallery

Nina Else, Bread Loaf, Tercera Gallery

Nina Else, Tercera Gallery

Quote

"With my students, I don’t even talk about abstraction and representation, because I think we’re beyond that. I think we’re at a time where everything is abstract and everything is representational. It’s more about how you find your own language with paint. It’s really just your body and its relationship to the world. Using the senses is not anti-intellectual."
Painter Josephine Halvorson in The Brooklyn Rail

Clare Grill, Annie Leibovitz and Josephine Halvorson

Clare Grill, E.T.

What a beautiful convergence here -- the living, human (or alien) presence of the object; and you can really, physcally FEEL both Leibovitz and Halvorson looking. I love Halvorson's idea of the painting/motif 'looking back.' Interesting -- the similar close-up, cropping in all three.

Annie Leibovitz, Emily Dickinson's dress from Pilgrimage

Josephine Halvorson, Concrete Chest

"Unlike her staged and carefully lit portraits made on assignment for magazines and advertising clients, the photographs in this exhibition were taken simply because Leibovitz was moved by the subject. The images speak in a commonplace language to the photographer’s curiosity about the world she inherited, spanning landscapes both dramatic and quiet, interiors of living rooms and bedrooms, and objects that are talismans of past lives...Visiting the homes of iconic figures including Thomas Jefferson, Emily Dickinson, Georgia O’Keeffe, Pete Seeger, and Elvis Presley, as well as places such as Niagara Falls, Walden Pond, Old Faithful, and the Yosemite Valley, she let her instincts and intuitions guide her to related subjects—hence the title “Pilgrimage.”" Smithsonian American Art Museum

"Josephine Halvorson has an itinerant practice. She searches for objects willing to ‘look back’. Working perceptually on site, Halvorson’s paintings contain the reciprocities that develop between artist and object, and become testaments to time spent. The exchanges, which take place in a single session, test the limits of the body, witness the vagaries of weather and light, attract passing strangers, and - when materialized in paint - take on unexpected meanings. The works on view were made in places as diverse as Shoshone, California; Canaan, New York; Akureyri, Iceland; and Shoreham, England. Halvorson's explorations are not only geographical, but also psychological. Chance encounters with objects in their environments realize internal glimpses of paintings unmade yet somehow anticipated. Halvorson considers a painting successful when it asserts a life independent of its power to represent either the original object or the experience of its own making. She hopes these paintings return the attention that produced them and, as a group, evoke an everevolving narrative." Sikkema Jenkins Press Release

Allison Schulnik

Allison Schulnik, Cat Head

Allison Schulnik, Flower Mound

Above images from the Q&A at New American Paintings.

Katherine Sable

Katherine Sable, Show a Little Ankle, 2011, oil on linen, 66 x 54 inches

at Heiner Contemporary

Larissa Bates

Lucas Cranach the Elder, Laura Shema, and Lucian Freud

Laura Shema

Laura Shema

Richard Baker's book paintings and Gideon Bok's LP Paintings

"Which books to paint then?" Baker writes. "I began to think about books that had been important and life-changing for me, but which I now felt I could no longer return to—books that held great meaning for me as a youth but lacked the same impact upon rereading...Which books to paint then? I began to think about books that had been important and life-changing for me, but which I now felt I could no longer return to—books that held great meaning for me as a youth but lacked the same impact upon rereading...As my involvement with this act of 'portraiture' has continued, the reasons for choosing which titles and editions have evolved and become more various, though it remains of paramount importance that they be familiar and of no special pedigree. In the end, these paintings stand against loss and for reverie, memory, optimism, desire, and love." Richard Baker

Gideon Bok:

Gideon Bok is painting his LPs. Love it.

Portraits and Panels

Circle of Hugo Van der Goes

Fayyum portrait

Fayyum Portrait

Hugo Van der Goes

Lucian Freud

I know, Lucian Freud is like whoa. Every year I have a student who is super talented and will do a copy of a Freud painting that just is amazing and better than I could. Lately, I have been
looking at Hugo Van der Goes -- for me there is a density there that is like the same as Freud, just blended and smoothed and softened. I also like how sometimes you see these type of portraits on unframed, odd-shaped wood panels (maybe parts of an altar or somesuch) -- so the very "realness" of the illusion of the flesh contrasts with the very obvious object-ness of the support. Same with the Roman Fayum mummy portraits.

Painter's Group

Pop over here to follow the studio visits I am doing as a part of a DC-area painters' group. Basically, every month an artist hosts the group in their space for some art chat, feedback, and general camaraderie. So far, visits have been with Lisa Rosenstein, Deborah Carroll Anzinger, and myself -- more to come!

Amber Robles Gordon

DC artist Amber Robles Gordon

artifacts of a community

I'm a Fool for You

Venus Rising From the Sea: A Deception (After the Bath), by Raphaelle Peale

Love this painting; somehow it is trompe-l'oiel but even more (like double trompe l'oiel?), painting meta, playing with flatness/3D. American but to me at first looks Spanish, like Sanchez Cotan or Zurbaran or something holy, shroud of Turin-y... I love the play of the covering/hiding though I like the cloth itself so much that I don't really need Venus. I am trying to do my "take" with a painty bandana. Here is Catherine Kehoe's "On the Line." And I am also reposting Andrew Cranston's take since I like it so. And a sculptural piece by Maria Walker -- note the title is "Fool Me Once".

Andrew Cranston, After An American Painting

Maria Walker, Fool Me Once

Dawn Black

saw her work at (e)merge art fair. like these 2 especially.

some arts

Rachael Gorchov

Eden Veaudry

Shelby Donnelly

Kendell Carter

Maria Walker

Nancy Shaver
Maria Walker
Maria Walker