Matisse, his Notes of a Painter he does not endorse working purely from nature or purely from imagination. He states, “… I think that one can judge the vitality and power of an artist who, after having received impressions directly from the spectacle of nature, is able to organize his sensations to continue his work in […]
The fifth of this series of portraits of my brother Mike* is a bit different than the others. Mike would often display fits of rage, directed at himself. Some docs thought he was Tourettic, others thought it was a behavioral issue. The point is, Mike could be frightening. I weathered the storm and didn’t believe […]
I had a nice dream last night, for a change of pace. There were hundreds of purple bits arrayed in random, peeling off the floor. To my delight, I was able to control them and align them in the direction I wanted them to go.
I recently bought a turntable that has a computer connection. Now comes the fun part: recording hundreds of my vinyl records that I bought in the 1970s and 1980s. Most of my long playing records are folk music: Irish ulleann bagpipes pipes; English Northumbrian folksongs; Jewish Klezmer music; Old Timey (pre-bluegrass) American music; French hurdy […]
I took a photo many years ago, when I first started taking pictures of Mike, my older brother.* I have never been able to make contact with Mike and pursued a long-term photography project in an attempt to understand him better. He was relaxing in his classroom when I came in. The bulletin board was a […]
I used to play the violin. I still have the one my friend from a violin-making school made for me. It is a beautiful copy of a Guarneri del Gesu. I’m scared to death to look at it, as I haven’t taken it out in a very long time. Paul Klee was a musician as well […]
I came across some unfinished drawings made by my granddaughter, in scouring my stash for paper. I began my folding process and used some watercolor crayons to mark the creases. I didn’t have much of an idea about how to treat the original sketch, so I filled in the boxes, made by the intersecting lines, […]
Lately, I have been building my paintings by responding to previous paint strokes with new ones. Often I have no idea what I will paint, except for the colors I begin with. Today however, I had something to say. Usually, it is very interesting to encounter people who’s minds operate differently than one’s own. It can be very […]
Some times a single image is not enough. During the past few days I have been focused on distilling an image into its visual essence. My goal was to convey the significance of the image with just the right amount of detail, no more, no less. Today’s experiment is a bit different. I unearthed a roll of […]
Sometimes I have trouble thinking of what to paint. Most of the time I get ideas from books I read or trying to ‘make visible’ (to borrow a phrase from the great Paul Klee) what is in my head or in my dreams. Today a family member with whom I live had to go back to […]
