New Painting, new thoughts.

I do believe I have finished another painting today. The sun has gone down hours ago and the paint in in the middle of it's drying stage. I worked today with a wonderful color I haven't worked with in years, probably not since 2000 have I worked with this color...Quinacridone Violet. And seeing it as it dries makes me wanna work with it more. It just has such a sensuality of it's deep bluish red color. Not quite Purple but dark enough for other people to consider it purple. This is also the first time I have worked with Guerra paint and pigments additive called Antifoam. I felt the need to get this after many paintings that ended up with pinholes in the surface color that while it doesn't really irritate me, it did take away from my views on the perfection I am struggling to achieve on the canvas. Or loose perfection, I might add...as I am always adding an element of improvisation to my work. As I am looking over the surface I now see the absence of pinholes...or no where near as many. I guess i'll have to wait till the paint in fully dry to find out for sure.

From looking at past entries to the blog, you can tell it has been a little while since I last finished a painting. In that time I have been accumulating a number of canvases that are sitting along the walls, just waiting to have their surfaces in the same state that this new one is in. And seeing this one and how well it has turned out...so far. Makes me long for the next birth of painting that I can accomplish. I don't like calling my paintings finished. Because it is not the end for them, but their beginning. As they are being fitted for their big moment in the stark light of the galleries that they are to eventually visit.

Thanks for reading. And thanks going out to Art Guerra who helped to create this wonderful Antifoam for acrylic paints. If you are an artist who finds that their drying paints do get pinholes in them. Try this product. You will be happy.

You can find out more about this company through their site and in NYC @ http://guerrapaint.com/index.html

Rothko at the Tate

Planning on making my first trip to England in the new year to see this amazing show and to hang with friends and to make some new friends.

College Loses Painting Worth Millions

A Tremendous Loss,' Professor Says

Wellesley College has lost a 1921 painting by French cubist Fernand Leger that was likely worth millions of dollars, officials admitted Wednesday."Woman and Child" had been in the collection of the college's Davis Museum and Cultural Center since 1954.After its return last year from an exhibit at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art, the college had stored the painting in a crate “while a museum construction project was completed,” said Wellesley President H. Kim Bottomly.

Months later, it was nowhere to be found. The museum “has not determined what happened to the painting or its current whereabouts,” said Bottomly. The museum didn't realize the 21-inch-by-25-inch painting was gone until last November. Officials don’t know whether the painting was stolen or might have been mistakenly thrown out when packing crates were discarded.A Wellesley museum official "asked me, 'Do you have our Leger, by chance?' " Oklahoma City Museum of Art registrar Matthew C. Leininger said. "I said, 'No, why are you asking?' That's when she said they couldn't find it. I said, 'Oh, boy.'"“It's a tremendous loss for the college, “ said Jacqueline Marie Musacchio, associate professor of art at Wellesley.Police were told and the museum's insurer, Travelers Insurance, has paid a claim though neither the company nor the college would say how much. Last year, Leger's paintings sold for an average of $2.8 million.“The loss of this valuable and irreplaceable painting has saddened the entire community, and we still hope it will be found,” said Bottomly.Travelers is offering a $100,000 reward for the painting.

http://www.thebostonchannel.com/news/17317760/detail.html
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Me personally. I think this is hilarious, I guess the saying is true...a fool and his money(art in this instance) are quickly parted. But in this instance it's a whole University that played the fool this time.

A Human Level of Painting.

As a result of my difficulty of looking at large format paintings. Attempting to view the highest extremities of these large canvases, makes it hard for me to fully enjoy taking in these wonderful works in color and form.

I recently went to the National Gallery in Washington DC, where I finally got to see a decent amount of Abstract Expressionist paintings. My first Motherwell, my first set from Barnett Newman. But in my viewing of the Rothko paintings, seeing just how high on the wall they had been hung. Made me realize why Mark asked people to hang his paintings low on the walls. Supposedly at a more human level, as these were definitely not hung at that level. I am 5'9" tall and don't like looking at a huge painting that is hung on a wall at a point where the middle of the piece is right about eye level.

To me this is very wrong in practice, as it should not make your eyes strain to try viewing the top of the canvas. It makes it easier to view the bottom of the painting, but to myself and to many many more who visit these places everyday, we would like to be able to REALLY view the top of the canvas at a reasonable height, so as to get a truly good view of the rest of the canvas. Which as most painters paint, the top is usually the beginning of the painting, and gives one many ideas of how the canvas was brought into a painting. This high level of paintings on a wall simply takes away from the viewing of the painting and makes the painting...made by a human, act more as if an alter to worship at as opposed to what it truly is. A Painting made by a painter so that other humans might be able to receive the same feelings the artist is trying to convey.

J.C.

Meeting with new friends

A few weeks ago I spent my weekend on a trip to DC to visit their museums and more. But mostly to visit the Philips Collection and see the Symposium on Painting that was taking place that Saturday. Among the speakers was my good friend Joseph Marioni. Who was speaking on the section that seemed to be the most about actual painting. I'm trying to get in touch with the Philips Collection to perhaps get a dvd copy of the symposium, which in all was very interesting. Lots of great points were made and if it hadn't been for the hour time limit of the sections, I think the symposium could have gone a few hours longer than they had set it up for.

While I was there in the first intermission, while speaking with Joe on the importance of mass transit in large cities. We were greeted by Timothy App, who is a brilliant professor at MICA (Maryland Institute College of Art). We got into a couple great conversations about art, and he even mentioned he was a great fan of my favorite art documentary...Painters Painting by Emile De Antonio. After the next break I asked him what his favorite part of the film was and he told me it was the piece on Larry Poons. I mentioned that it too has been my favorite section of that film and began to embark on a nice long chat about Poons and Frank Stella.

As the day grew on I knew that this conversation with Timothy and his friends was the first really great talk about painting I had been in for a long time and how much I wanted more of that. Since then I have been on a method of getting my ass to NYC where I can meet other like minded painters and artists of all kinds.

















You can learn a lot more about Timothy in this fantastic interview.
http://www.geoform.net/features/features_app.html

you can find out about his paintings here too...
http://www.artnet.com/artist/1578/timothy-app.html

New showing for a friend

My good friend Michael Lukacsko is including two sets of his mandala prints at BOMA in Columbus Ohio. BOMA is the Bar of Modern Art...where they have many showings of local artists and paintings and sculpture abound in the club. Mike took 24 pieces from his Mandala series there and spent two days hanging all of them to great fanfare. Many people have been expressing an interest in his prints. And I wanted to show a few photos of the mandala and their installation.

You can view the full amount of installation photos on Mike's Myspace page at http://www.myspace.com/neterhet
and you can also view them at http://www.artwanted.com/artist.cfm?ArtID=30435