Award-winning blogazine, primarily about painting
Tuesday, May 14, 2024
Sheila Barbone, “Watch Hill 15,” 18″x23″ oil on panel. Courtesy of Trade Winds Gallery, Mystic, CT. I’ll be at on vacation for the week but will return with “Against the Tide,” a long overdue exhibition of paintings by Two Coats of Paint readers. See you at East Beach. —
Susan Bee, “Woman Tormented By Demons,” 2009, oil on linen, 18 x14.” This week, after a trip to the Venice Biennale, Jerry Saltz worries about the state of the art world and suggests that younger artists have hit a rough patch. At the Biennale he “saw the same thing, a […]
Clare Grill, “Tape,” 2011, oil on linen, 11 x 11.” Clare Grill, “Gimcrack, 2011, oil on linen, 20 x 19.” This week I saw a few of Clare Grill’s paintings at “A Review,” Edward Thorp’s eclectic group painting show that’s up through July 29. Grill relies on small scale and […]
Ion Birch, “Le Papillon,” 2010, graphite on paper, 25×22″ How can we not love the bawdy irreverence of summer group shows like “Romantic Agony,” which is on display at Horton Gallery through the end of the week. The title for this post comes from the press release, which earnestly calls […]
Kara Walker at Sikkema Jenkins, installation view. “This new work is also an object lesson for artists. Walker�s discipline and willingness to return to something as fundamental, intimate, and seemingly mundane as drawing�a medium that�s all about the marvels of movement, often passed over in the rush to new […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / A few years ago I was at the Mattatuck Museum checking out the Connecticut Biennial, and I ran across a haunting painting by Kay Sage in the permanent collection. From the painting’s label I learned that Sage had died in 1963, but I didn’t know […]
Chris Martin, “Staring into the Sun� (4 ? 7 ? 11),” 2003, oil on canvas, three parts, 143 x 129″ each. When I first started writing for The Rail, in an article about the Tomma Abts show at the New Museum, I took a quote from a Chris Martin interview […]
At Martos Gallery: Davina Semo, “THEIR NOSTRILS SNIFF THE ORGY BEHIND THE WALL OF FLAME AND STEEL,” 2011, spray paint on safety glass, reinforced concrete, 36 x 36″ In a recent New York Mag review about Mark Grotjahn‘s show at Anton Kern, Jerry Saltz admired the paintings for what they […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / The pioneers of abstraction — the Cubists, the Abstract Expressionists, the Minimalists — emerged from firm and identifiable aesthetic roots and developed their own philosophies. In the competitive maelstrom of 20th century art, those philosophies became dogmas, and the dogmas outright manifestos. In the new […]
The other day Austin Thomas, who is feeling overwhelmed with emails from struggling artists, blogged some career advice. Rather than continually ask other people for career help, Thomas urges artists to simply do something interesting (curate a show, organize a salon, write about other artists’ work, etc.) that helps others. […]
