Painting Exhibition at Tunnel City

Here are two photos that I took last night after hanging an exhibition of 37 of my paintings at Tunnel City on Spring Street in Williamstown, MA.  The paintings will be up for a while, so please visit Tunnel City, and let me know what you think.

Large Painting on the Studio Wall

Two views of the studio wall from this morning.  I splurged recently to frame the large painting (3x4') with the hope of selling it.  The painting, which depicts the underside of the Gowanus Expressway in Brooklyn, came about due to a commission that didn't work out.

Three Alpacas

A 9x12 charcoal and pastel drawing, part of a continuing project.  It's like Degas' dancers and horses, except they're alpacas.

Sweet Brook Farm Alpacas

The top oil painting of alpacas and house is 14x18.  The bottom two 9x12 drawings are charcoal and pastel.  Yes, I am temporarily alpaca nuts.

Al and His Pal

Here are two 9x12 pastel and charcoal drawings of alpacas at the Sweetbrook Farm, part of a larger project I am working on.  They've been shorn, so are a little thin below the face.  They have interesting personalities.

More Shore and Cezanne

A 9x12 pastel and charcoal drawing.

Just completed reading Cezanne and the End of Impressionism by Richard Shiff.  It contains an intriguing line somewhere in the middle: "One is confronted with the possibility that all art is actively made; and impressionism's appearance is not the result of receptive innocence, but active deception."  Deception here means that the artist really does know what he is doing, but paints as if he might not.   Shiff calls this the "technique of originality".  I can't quote the whole book, but Shiff explains why Cezanne is a master impressionist.

Back to the Water

Two 8x10 pastels of the Ogunquit coast.

Two Pastels

If all mornings could only be like this one: two 8x10 pastels of the canal.

Five Corners Study

8x12 pastel.

Rudolf Arnheim writes: "The question is not, Why did Cezanne not use correct perspective? but,  Why should he have?  The tradition of naturalistic representation has made us forget that every pictorial device calls for justification--including the conformation to nature."

Five Corners View

Another in the series.  8x10 pastel.

Steep Hill

9x12 pastel of Sheep Hill, which is a steep hill.  This view is from the northern end looking back towards the Hopper from last Sunday morning.

Here's a comment from Arnheim: "In his travel diary Meerfahrt mit Don Quixote, Thomas Mann reports being struck by the unique trick of Cervantes, which I too, pondered last summer.  Writing a second volume of his work fifteen years after the first volume was published, Cervantes makes the first volume a book read by some characters in the second.  He thereby turns the story told as a reality in the first volume into a mere narration figuring in a secondary reality, which has taken over from the first.  This dizzying performance could be compared with, and clarified by, the practice of painters such as Matisse or Seurat, who showed their own earlier works hanging on the walls of their paintings of interiors."

Keep Still Life

These will be the last of the still lifes that I post for a while, a grapefruit and a lemon.  I like them because they are Zurbaranesque.  Both are 5x7 pastels.

Arnheim writes: "Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra.  Apparently it does not matter to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit."

A Tomato and An Apple

Two more 5x7 pastels from the fruit and vegetable series!  I just put them there, don't fuss with them, and start working.  I have learned a lot about using pastels from these small paintings.

Still Lifes

A couple of vegetables that are posed for still lifes, both 5x7 pastels.  I am making them for a small exhibition.

Fifth and Bergen

9x12 pastel.

Grand and Pacific

9x12 pastel.  Simulated helter skelter,  I'm getting close to what I want to achieve, even though it may not look like it.

Dean Street

8x10 pastel.

Pacificker

More Pacific near Classon in Brooklyn.  8x10 pastel.  Trying to learn from my charcoal sketches.

Bright and Early Morning River

This is an 8x10 pastel of a familiar spot at Washington's Crossing on the Delaware River. I did it last week but forgot to photograph and post it. Too busy trying to finish the Matisse book.

Luce Road Revisited

This is one of three pastels I did of sites on Luce Road this weekend.