Award-winning NYC blogazine, primarily about painting
Saturday, February 27, 2021
Contributed by Emma Stolarski / Plant life is one of nature’s masterpieces. Botanical beauty, medicine, and ecological systems are integrated in every part of our lives, whether we think about it or not. Despite being here well before us and defining us as humans, plants are having an especially unique […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / In the 1940s, Philip Guston noted that the problem with figurative art was that it “vanishes into recognition.” By 1960, he was griping about the conceit that abstract art was “autonomous, pure and for itself.” The tension implied by these two conflicting but evidently valid […]
Contributed by Andrew Woolbright / Angela Dufresne’s dual shows at Yossi Milo Gallery and M+B Los Angeles provide an opportunity to assess the full breadth of this influential figurative painter’s practice. The two shows, opened in tandem, nearly emptied her studio. The exhibits pose new paths forward from John Currin […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / The clash between Donald Trump’s nascent fascism and America’s liberal traditions, brought to a head by the murder of George Floyd and its aftermath and exacerbated by the Covid-19 pandemic, made the 2020 election the most important one since Abraham Lincoln prevailed in 1860. In […]
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Recently, Natasha Wright and Benjamin Pritchard had concurrent solo exhibitions at the John Davis Gallery in Hudson, NY. Both painters are drawn to a raw style of power painting that conjures Jackson Pollock and Lee Krasner in the pre-drip years, when they were thinking about Jungian analysis, the […]
As some readers may remember, I went to the University of Connecticut for my MFA degree, and until last year, I taught an MFA seminar up in Storrs. These days my schedule doesn’t allow taking those beautiful foliage tours up to Storrs each week, so I invited the first- and second-year students for […]
This month New York painters and critics are talking about “Reinventing Abstraction,” an exhibition of paintings from the 1980s curated by Raphael Rubinstein. His incisive selection includes one painting each by Carroll Dunham, Louise Fishman, Jonathan Lasker, Mary Heilmann, Bill Jensen, Stephen Mueller. Elizabeth Murray, Thomas Nozkowski, David Reed, Joan […]
Charles Cohan, “MGP09.X-XVII,” 2010, colagraph print, 46 x 40,” edition of one. For the next day or two, I’ll be lurking around the museums and galleries in DC. One of my favorite DC galleries is Curator’s Office, Andrea Pollan’s micro-gallery/office space on 14th Street. She shows small-scale […]
Andrew Zarou’s particular beat
Andrew Zarou, under the rhodondendron 2021, flashe on unprimed linen, 16 x 12 inches
Contributed by Ben Pritchard / Andrew Zarou’s compelling exhibition at The Painting Center is resonant of the ...
Two Coats Selected Gallery Guide: February 2021
Microscope: Yasue Maetake, Transmutations, installation view
This month Two Coats of Paint is unveiling a site redesign (big thanks to Heather Bause Rubinstein for the encouragement and technical support), which includes ...
Medrie MacPhee, David Humphrey, and the power of recognition
Medrie MacPhee (back wall) and David Humphrey (front wall) at the New York Studio School. Installation view.
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / In the 1940s, Philip Guston noted that the ...
Martin Kline: Tempered by discipline
Martin Kline, Back From Venice (II), 2019, encaustic and oil on panel, 42 x 42 x 2 3/4 inches
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Martin Kline’s meticulous and thoughtful abstractions, on ...
Tula x Yuko Nishikawa: Designing life within a shell
Contributed by Emma Stolarski / Plant life is one of nature’s masterpieces. Botanical beauty, medicine, and ecological systems are integrated in every part of our lives, whether we think about ...
Scott Daniel Ellison: “Every artist is in some way self-taught”
Scott Daniel Ellison's images of flora and fauna are suffused with personhood--trees wave bony limbs, bats have human faces, and animals wear jewelry. Working at a small scale and focusing ...
Spencer Lewis’s mesmerizing formlessness
Spencer Lewis: Six Jutes (2) installation at Harper’s Chelsea. (All photos courtesy of Harper’s Chelsea).
Contributed by Patrick Neal / Spencer Lewis’s large, colorful, gestural abstractions, on view at Harper’s Chelsea ...
The “whorish porous” in the work of Angela Dufresne
Angela Dufresne, installation view at Yossi Milo
Contributed by Andrew Woolbright / Angela Dufresne’s dual shows at Yossi Milo Gallery and M+B Los Angeles provide an opportunity to assess the full ...
Art and Film: Painter-Spy in Bridge of Spies
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / Bridge of Spies begins and ends with a painting. Steven Spielberg’s latest film is a penetrating and affecting consideration of the Cold War, based on ...
What good is abstract painting now?
Laurie Fendrich's new studio in Connecticut
Contributed by Laurie Fendrich / Without any bombs exploding or even a single shot fired, the world we knew before COVID has gone “poof.” Sure ...