Award-winning NYC blogazine, primarily about painting
Saturday, February 27, 2021
Contributed by Patrick Neal / Taking in the paintings of Maeve D’Arcy, currently on view at Kathryn Markel Fine Arts, I kept thinking of the defunct movie rental store Kim’s Video that had long occupied Manhattan’s East and West Villages. These places were legendary repositories of arthouse films, and D’Arcy’s […]
Now that the presidential election is over and 2020 is drawing to a close, we have begun our annual year-end fundraising campaign. Two Coats of Paint began publishing in 2007, and this past year, thanks to your generous tax-deductible contributions and ongoing support from our advertisers, social media services clients, and the Two Trees Cultural […]
New York-based painter Louise Belcourt recently returned from a quiet summer in the country, where she completed new work, which is on view through December 12 at the Locks Gallery in Philadelphia. The series comprises collages on paper made with painted gouache shapes, infusing the curvy hard-edge simplicity of Matisse […]
Something there badly not wrong –Samuel Beckett, Worstward Ho Contributed by David Humphrey / The spinning rainbow symbol interrupts our screen time. Buffered and helpless, we pause with the device to wait, perhaps to sink back into our thoughts or to drift into another task. That rainbow, called by some […]
Contributed by Patrick Neal / In earlier paintings, artist Rob Ventura explored the anatomical and cellular characteristics of toxic flowers – a menacing subject that would lead to a parallel interest in the structures of disease-causing microorganisms. Ventura had completed new paintings centered on viruses, fungi and bacteria in the […]
Contributed by Jonathan Stevenson / The Trump administration has tried to physically cordon off Mexico from the United States, and presumably would just as soon exclude the country from America’s cultural orbit as well. From that perspective, the Whitney’s judiciously conceived exhibition “Vida Americana: Mexican Muralists Remake American Art” is […]
Contributed by Laurie Fendrich / Boy did the otherwise on-the-mark Guardian television critic Lucy Mangan get it wrong. In her 2017 review of the Flemish detective series Professor T, she dismissed the show as “thin gruel” with “morsels pilfered from the greats” (by which she meant such television shows as […]
Contributed by Sangram Majumdar / Lisa Corinne Davis, whose solo is on view at Pamela Salisbury through November 2, is an abstract painter known for her engaging explorations of map imagery, codes, and drawing systems. Recently she has been thinking about the destablization resulting from Covid, politics, and the current […]
There is a bit of urgency to get out and see some shows in the next few weeks because it looks like we might be faced with another wave of Covid and, thus, another lockdown. In related news, the election is underway, so don’t forget to go out and vote. […]
Contributed by Karen Schifano / Reacting to the overtly emotional critical response to Abstract Expressionism, Frank Stella sought to refine Greenbergian formalism by reducing painting to its value as an object and nothing more. He is famous for saying, “What you see is what you see,” and influenced an entire […]
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 ...