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!

Scott Schnepf

I love the quiet, studied grace of Scott Schnepf's work. They are complex yet simple. Detail, minutiae...with structure, strength, and unity. I am on a Jan Van Eyck kick, and I think of his motto, 'As best I can' ('als ick can'). Not like, ooh, look how amazing my art is (though it certainly is), but a more modest declaration, here, I tried as hard as I could.

mike dowley

by Mike Dowley.

Even Better Than Maple Syrup

My month at the Vermont Studio Center has been just awesome. Figuring prominently in this awesomeness have been the other artist residents here, especially my studio building mates. Here is some of their beautiful work, with website links (click on the image):

Sarah Williams

Tuck Wash, 2009, oil, 30”x30”

Sara Jones

Flora, acrylic and oil on panel, 8" x 12", 2008

Siobhan McBride

Red Hook, 2008, Gouache on paper, 24" x 18"

Danielle Mysliwiec

Knot, 2007, Oil on Wood Panel, 9" x 9"

Lanie Wurzel

Slide Show, 2009, Oil on Canvas, 62" x 76.5"

Jennifer Moses

Jennifer Moses, oil on panel

Jennifer Moses, A Line is a Straight Curve, oil on panel

Jennifer Moses is a great painter and teacher. She currently has a show at the Kingston Gallery in Boston, A Line is a Straight Curve. She is so mindful and intelligent with her work, and looking at it makes me want to paint, paint, paint. Writes Moses on her website:

"I have worked to integrate my responses to the history and narrative of biblical stories with my contemporary secular and modernist aesthetic, in an attempt to imbue abstract imagery with the same emotive weight of storytelling. The paintings are inspired by decorative details, color structure and particular parts of other paintings including hairstyles from the early Renaissance Italian paintings that have so inspired me and influenced my work.

As I rework my paintings I am attempting to transform these shapes and flourishes into symbolic images that evoke a range of emotional conditions and complex spaces. I build the paint into odd iconographic formations and architectural spaces that reference an internal world full of oppositions such as structured form and unraveling form, rawness and refinement, exposure and secrecy."

Emily Do, Joren Lindholm, Meredith Nelson

some great artists i have recently had the pleasure to meet:

Meredith Nelson, Sonic Gasoline

Joren Lindholm, Self Portrait

Emily Do, untitled (warp)

Painting Love

Some painting love... What can I say but I heart???

Jamie Bowman

Clare Grill

Langdon Quin and Craig Hood

I was lucky to have some amazing artists as professors as an undergrad and in grad school. Here is work by two of them, and I'll gladly post some work by others more in the near future.

This painting by Craig Hood is, I think, one of my favorite paintings ever. Hobos, babies, parenting manuals? Hood says the piece is about love, really. The color and composition, the light and shadow, the small details and large shapes of beautiful mixed, layered paint -- I like everything about this.

Drummer Boy, another painting by Craig Hood.

Still Life with Kitchen Glove, Langdon Quin

Great painting class. Now that I am teaching a painting class, I've amassed a pretty sizeable heap of still life objects, including some distinctively colored dishwashing gloves. Whenever I put them in a still life I think of them as my Langdon gloves. If students have trouble mixing the color of them, I tell them that cerulean blue plus a lemony yellow is a good start...