Articles
Time-Traveling Art Critics
In times like these it’s tempting to fantasize what life might have been like in another century, another culture, among a coterie of friends and acquaintances who had things on their minds other than the pandemic and insane politicians. I’ve occasionally wondered...
Leslie Parke
More so than most, Leslie Parke grew up with abundant encouragement to embark on the path of an artist. At the age of five she was studying art books on the living room floor of the family house in Scarsdale, NY. (“I had the childish desire to live inside a painting...
We Can Get There from Here
An Artist Reflects on Drawing During Tumultuous Times By Christine Taylor Patten When Pennsylvania’s votes were counted and the welcome winner of the 2020 presidential election was called early the next morning, I missed the excitement at first, having finally slept a...
A Visit to “Willa”
In the high desert of northern New Mexico, sculptor and photographer Paul O'Connor takes in his friend Debbie Long's immersive installation. "Trippy" barely begins to describe the experience. By Paul O'Connor Several months have passed since my visit to Debbie...
Tom Martinelli
Tom Martinelli’s artistic journey might be said to begin with a real journey, when he and some friends repurposed a New York City school bus and drove it west as far as Tucson, AZ, in 1971. Seventeen years old and just out of high school, he and his sidekicks were on...
The Monuments Contest: Part Two
Compared with the duration of empires past—like those of ancient Rome or Great Britain—the U.S. occupies a relatively tiny span of time, a little more 234 years as the great democratic experiment, if we date the founding of the country to 1776. And so our monuments...
Woody and Pablo: Crimes or Misdemeanors?
I fell down the rabbit hole with Woody Allen last week. Blame it on Google and Kate Winslet. I am often, in the wee hours, trolling something on the Big G called “stories to read” (well, what else are they for? They’re online; you can’t use them to line the litter...
The Monuments Contest: And the Winners Are (Part One)
Everyone is a winner in the competition to replace those tired, toppled memorials In the wake of the murder of George Floyd in May, protesters around the globe tore down monuments to the Confederacy, to slave traders, and to racist baddies of all stripes. I could not...
Frances Ashforth: Rocks Around the Clock
Frances Ashforth’s fascination with water, sky, and undulating landscapes began early. Raised in a family of artists, she spent time as a child at her grandparents’ farm in New Hampshire, along the Connecticut River Valley. She is an avid fly fisherman and in her...
Barbara Kemp Cowlin
One way or another, many artists end up following a circuitous path to maturity, but Barbara Kemp Cowlin seems to have stumbled across more landmines and detours than most, partly because of fate, partly because of the times in which she came of age. She moved...
How are you? No, I mean, really, how are you?
Artists talk about altered states during the pandemic We are now about seven months into a worldwide catastrophe that has affected nearly every fiber and facet of our being. Many of us have been sheltering in place, limiting our contacts with the outside world,...
Art Advisers Redux
Almost five years ago I published a post about art advisers, those hard-working middlemen and women who match up artists with corporate clients, budding collectors, or homeowners in the throes of renovation. Enough has changed since that time that the subject seemed...
Good-Bye to All That
A dedicated teacher looks back on three decades in the classroom In December of this year, I will retire from teaching painting, a job I’ve loved for 30 years. Although I am looking forward to a new phase in my life, I will miss this role. I’ve had a good run and feel...
À la Recherche de Jeanne Duval
Who Was the Mysterious Mistress Immortalized by Two 19th-century Geniuses, Charles Baudelaire and Édouard Manet The widespread protests in the wake of George Floyd’s murder in May, abetted by the swelling powers of the Black Lives Matter movement, got some of us with...
James Deeb
Though he has been painting and drawing them for years, James Deeb’s cast of ghoulish characters seem especially attuned to the present moment. Realized in thick impasto and often sickly color, they are bloated, demonic, smug, and menacing. They have obvious...
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