Artists' Writings
Tree. 22 x 30" Wax crayon on paper. 2018.
Fifty Years Drawing Trees
Trees, as a continuing subject of interest, have accompanied me through my life as an artist. I think it was Basil King, an older, more experienced artist and my informal mentor in the early 1970s who suggested I go out into the street and find some trees to draw.
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Luna Park Postcard
The exciting images on vintage postcards first attracted me to the theme of Luna Park, Coney Island. A confusion of forms, circles, linear zigzags, minuets, domes, and colors caught my attention. They were intoxicating, even disorienting.
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Signing a Painting
Why do I resist signing my name to a painting? I can’t be the only artist with this problem. I wait and wait, sometimes years, until I can barely recall when I actually completed the work.
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STILL LIFE WITH RECORDER. OIL ON CANVAS. 1972-73.
I was reading John Elderfield’s excellent book, “The Drawings of Henri Matisse,” and came across a Matisse quotation that attracted my attention. Matisse said that In his earliest works he
“found something that was always the same which at first glance I thought to be monotonous repetition. It was the mark of my personality which appeared the same no matter what different states of mind I happened to have passed through.”
Finding and then defining this “monotonous quality” is not an easy task.
Read MoreCollaging Guston & Dubuffet
What fascinates me most about making collages is how disparate elements interact with one another to create something entirely different, unexpected, than the individual parts. The process is like a mystery unfolding in front of your eyes. And the artist is the detective. Frequently, some unnoticed mark, color or line in one element interacts with another in a way that hadn’t been anticipated. Collages have this wonderful surprise that keeps me coming back for more (Work/Collages).
In this blog, I wish to create a collage of words chosen, somewhat randomly, from the essays, lectures or interviews of two of my favorite artists: Philip Guston and Jean Dubuffet. My hope is that the juxtaposition of their words will sharpen our understanding of each artist while also broadening our view of art, and how it is made.
I will be quoting JD from the MOMA publication The Work of Jean Dubuffet, by Peter Selz with texts by the artist, and Philip Guston, Collected Writings, Lectures, and Conversations, edited by Clark Coolidge.
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