Something has changed. It has been two months here in Canaan, NY. I have been ok through all of this pandemic. Worrying about the city and the deaths. I saw a report of a hospital worker taking it upon herself to lay a daffodil on each coffin. Worry now extends to the millions out of work and the mismanagement from this President of the whole of it.
I realized that this would be the end of my routine, which for twenty years I was-- off to New Mexico, and my summer studio and new paintings.
I thought I'd review it and see it's shape as something to take forward. This is roughly what I did twenty years ago. The western idea of landscape, from my show at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in a waning Soho, to my residency at Joshua Tree, where I spent a month alone in the desert. My direction was all being questioned.
In 1999, back from teaching in Santa Barbara, I visited my friend John McCracken in New Mexico.
I was asked if I would want to house sit for another month or so. I said yes, and soon was asked also by Richard Tuttle and his wife Mei Mei whom I knew through friends, if I'd like to continue at their place on an extra ordinarily wonderful mesa. I found a studio in Abiquiu to work, and soon was asked if I'd be interested in buying the old coffee house, for not much more than I was renting it for.
New Mexico was new to me though I had passed through many times on my way to teaching in California in the 80's. It was always friendly and I liked the hispanic people and their colorful lives in a sometimes rather bleak landscape. I was busy exploring everything with plain air landscape paintings. I'd go back and paint these places and they became ideas for large blown up studio paintings.
One painting of a river bend became the background for a big figure painting. Later I saw John Sloan had painted it in the 1920's, a big rock at the bend was still there, and that it had a name, Trujillos Hill.
That sets the scene for 2000.
Paul Olsen a friend from NYC said I could use his barn in Madrid to paint in also. My studio in Abiquiu was small and soon I traveled the hour and a half or so to Madrid to work, I finished the first New Mexico paintings there and then soon after began the Madrid paintings.
I had been starting things, in the smaller Abiquiu studio in gesso and acrylic paint, not wanting to breathe any more turpentine fumes. I was finishing them in oil in Madrid, NM and then for reasons I have forgotten, they were finished in NYC.
Some were shown in 2002 with Steven Harvey at Salander O'Reilly Gallery.
This caught the attention of Gerald Peters and I was in a show with Paul Resika and Gregory Amenoff, at his Gallery in Santa Fe in 2005.
I realized that this would be the end of my routine, which for twenty years I was-- off to New Mexico, and my summer studio and new paintings.
I thought I'd review it and see it's shape as something to take forward. This is roughly what I did twenty years ago. The western idea of landscape, from my show at Tony Shafrazi Gallery in a waning Soho, to my residency at Joshua Tree, where I spent a month alone in the desert. My direction was all being questioned.
In 1999, back from teaching in Santa Barbara, I visited my friend John McCracken in New Mexico.
I was asked if I would want to house sit for another month or so. I said yes, and soon was asked also by Richard Tuttle and his wife Mei Mei whom I knew through friends, if I'd like to continue at their place on an extra ordinarily wonderful mesa. I found a studio in Abiquiu to work, and soon was asked if I'd be interested in buying the old coffee house, for not much more than I was renting it for.
New Mexico was new to me though I had passed through many times on my way to teaching in California in the 80's. It was always friendly and I liked the hispanic people and their colorful lives in a sometimes rather bleak landscape. I was busy exploring everything with plain air landscape paintings. I'd go back and paint these places and they became ideas for large blown up studio paintings.
That sets the scene for 2000.
Paul Olsen a friend from NYC said I could use his barn in Madrid to paint in also. My studio in Abiquiu was small and soon I traveled the hour and a half or so to Madrid to work, I finished the first New Mexico paintings there and then soon after began the Madrid paintings.
I had been starting things, in the smaller Abiquiu studio in gesso and acrylic paint, not wanting to breathe any more turpentine fumes. I was finishing them in oil in Madrid, NM and then for reasons I have forgotten, they were finished in NYC.
Some were shown in 2002 with Steven Harvey at Salander O'Reilly Gallery.
This caught the attention of Gerald Peters and I was in a show with Paul Resika and Gregory Amenoff, at his Gallery in Santa Fe in 2005.
