…I started to make portraits of artist friends in their studios. I had a curiosity and need to observe how they were setting up their workspaces and what they were surrounding themselves with. I wondered how they spent their days. @ Laurie Lambrecht, Roy with Reflections on the Prom, 1990. Image courtesy of the artist. […]

The patterning of stripes documents the journey along the trail, revealing the colors winter created in the landscape. For me, the painting also functions as a map, each color marking the location where it was found. Debra Ramsay, The colors of winter, 2014, acrylic on DuraLar, 33 x 40 in. Courtesy of the artist. When […]

…there seems to be no single truth but many truths when talking about oneself or one’s work. The layer upon layer of ideas, feelings, thoughts intertwine with such ferocity that any single truth seems to elude discovery. Lani Irwin, “Orange Moon”, 2008, oil on linen, 39 x 28 in. © Lani Irwin. Courtesy of the […]

I felt then, and still feel now, that the best art is internally complex. Even though my technique at the time was essentially reductive (flat colors, clean edges), I was trying my best to avoid simplicity. Minimalism was not, as I saw it, boisterous or contradictory enough to be of life. Maximalism was my chosen […]

That’s where the poetry comes in…finding the right word…to allow the viewer their own interior narrative. Daniel Levine, Bristol, 2012 – 2013, oil on cotton, 12 x 11 3/4 inches. Image courtesy the artist. (Larger) Daniel Levine’s paintings speak (sometimes quietly, sometimes less so) about color, surface, material and light. But mostly his monochromes—which is […]

Instead, sending my eyes closer into the grip of the perceptual moment is what I’m after… Stuart Shils, The Residue of Giotto After Imaginary Battles, Acrylic on Archival Digital Photograph, 2014, 6×6″. Image courtesy the artist. What really matters most to me is filling my eyes with joy when riding my bicycle around Philadelphia (the […]

My painting is rooted in a place…but as a general matter I am not a faithful copyist of the everyday. “Yellow Skirt, Brooklyn, 2014,” oil on linen, 52 x 78 inches. © Elisa Jensen. Image courtesy of the artist. A young woman walks at a rapid clip. It is a winter day and she is […]

The exhibition is a stunner, mostly because it’s DeFeo’s unremitting investigatory impulse and deft handling of (sometimes-) antagonistic media — rather than the handful of forms and objects that became both cast and crew in her work — that’s really the subject here. Jay DeFeo, “Untitled (White Spica),” 1973 Gelatin silver print 8 3/4 x […]

One would think that, in making paintings about pattern, there would be a defined beginning and end, an image that’s certain and void of breathing room. But that’s wrong. I feel as if I never know the ending. “Nocturne II,” graphite, oil and venetian plaster on panel, 7.5 x 9.5 inches, 2013. © Alison Hall. […]

Aspiring to express subtler layers of reality in his art, he gradually liberated himself from the limitations of an overt political agenda. Arnold Mesches, “Shock and Awe 23,” 2012. A/c, 80 x 104 in. © Arnold Mesches. Courtesy of the artist. The shock of his first encounter with Franz Kline’s paintings back in the fifties […]