Portraits. Suddenly they’re the rage. Every art critic/blogger seems to be showcasing someone’s new portrait of a hip-hop celebrity, or a museum’s retrospective of a newly discovered, been around a long time, figurative painter. The National Gallery held a portrait competition last summer and these are the finalists. Not many loosely painted or expressionist works. [...]

A 2009 spring painting, Ariettes Oublieés, will be shown at the Wayne Art Center’s members exhibit, juried by Michael Gallagher, a professor and painter at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. The exhibit runs from October 25th to November 21st, 2009. I’m happy to show this piece, it’s one of my recent favorites. While [...]

I liked David Hockney’s early portraits but his latest landscapes are quite a surprise if you haven’t yet discovered them. They remind me of a modern Matisse who might have used a lot of dioxazine purple to offset his phthalo greens and cadmium oranges. The liveliness of Hockney’s eye and hand are much evident and [...]

On the third draft of this painting, I now consider it finished. An earlier version is shown in my September 18th posting. Flight, oil on canvas 19.5″x27.5″, 2009.   This is a small piece I worked on at around the same time. Path, oil on canvas panel 9″x12″ 2009.   And a couple of shots [...]

I wrote this article in response to a friend’s claim that television was always a narcotic for him, that it cured his hives, lulled him into semi-consciousness and proved more effective than any chemical. Because it touches on reading and the power of literacy, it seems worth posting again here on my own blog. It was published [...]

I assume not everyone has been glued to their TV watching the Ken Burns epic all this week on PBS on National Parks: America’s Best Idea. Whether you like his filmmaking or not, the narrative and history of our parks and how they were preserved was enlightening and stunning to watch. Peter Coyote told us [...]