I had updated the previous post with more images, but the image I want to share is a bit different for the cut apple. This image of a floating apple was shot by setting up a stand attaching a skewer to hold the center apple aloft then a little photoshopping was necessary to remove the stand, fix a shadow and remove the candle directly behind the far left apple.
Basically I cut this apple and let it sit for awhile to let the cuts open up.
The National Gallery of Art has sent out the painting A Lady Writing by Johannes Vermeer (c. 1665). It will go on view at the Norton Simon this Friday, November 7th, and remain on view until February 2nd. This is the first painting to arrive here as part of a loan partnership between the Norton Simon, the NGA and the Frick collection in New York—the first painting to be lent was from the Norton Simon to the NGA, which was a Rembrandt. These trades will hopefully prove interesting. Unfortunately the Zurbarán still life at the Norton Simon will be gone for a while this coming spring as a part of the arrangement.
I’ve been back in LA for about a week, and I have made some progress on some new paintings. This painting is 22 X 39 inches. The underpainting, shown here, was created by mixing several values of grey from black and white gesso. In previous paintings, I have used these values as flat colors, but this is the first time I have used them to create the image prior to using oil paint.
PREFACE
The previous post was written on my phone. Writing on the Iphone is annoying. Trying to write anything that has to have some editing (and the desire to cut and paste) is painful.
PART ONE
I went to the East Coast for about ten days. The main reasons for the trip was to attend the opening of my new works at Plane Space, see the Morandi show at the Met and see my girlfriend, Sarah, who is in D.C., who was going come up to New York in addition to me ending my trip there, but she was recovering from a bug and traveling up to New York seemed difficult—unfortunately by the time I went down to D.C. I had caught something as well.
New York
In addition to my exhibition and Morandi, I had an idea for a some landscape paintings that are going to consist of images from Central Park and the Los Angeles River. Getting the images was very easy as I would go to Morandi then walk down trough the park taking suitable pictures eventually coming out some where and catching a bus or train back to the West Village where I was staying.
I mostly went to museum shows during the entire trip. In New York I went to: Van Gogh at MOMA, Opie at the Guggenheim, the Whitney (Eggleston was being installed), Peyton at the New Museum (I went before Heilmann was up, but I saw it in the O.C.) and of course Morandi three times.
I am going to remove the fence, gazebo and buildings from this one.
On Thursday, I went to Lisa Sandtiz opening. I like this series of work based on her experience in China, where they have cities that produce single products, in this case socks.
PART TWO
The Weekend In DC
The whole reason for going to DC was to see Sarah. We pack a lot into a short amount of time. I took the train down to DC on Friday afternoon to get to DC by Dinner. It left a little late but that was OK. I had to stand until Newark because they over sold the train. I think Amtrak wants to make sure I never have a incident free trip.
Except for the heavy rain on saturday D.C. was great. We went to the see what was happening at G Fine Art, where I had a exhibition a few years ago. As it started to rain we made our way over to the National Gallery. I have never made it through the contemporary section. And while I was told I hadn’t missed much, I still wanted to see it. In addition to the “newer” art, I looked at the Vermeers and their de La Tour, which might be the finest of the Magdalena paintings. We headed over to the Hirschhorn in the now torrential rain. By the time we got there I was soaked through. We quickly walked through, which was at my pace—missed the Sol LeWitt drawing. I understand the importance of the artist’s included, but I don’t necessarily need to spend any time with the work.
PART THREE
Sunday: The Barnes
this is what the Iphone captured in the garden
Sarah and I went to the Barnes in Philadelphia with Tyler Green, from DC, and met up Sarah’s friend and her husband in Philly. Tyler had warned us of the strict policies of the Barnes. They have timed entrances, not eating on the grounds, and no shortage of guards reminding you to stay behind the black lines on the floor. At one point Tyler and I were looking at a painting and I was demonstrating the size of a bail of cotton (over the line) when a guard I had spoken to earlier about why pencils are OK and not potentially exploding pens (it happens apparently) corrected my behavior.
Cezanne is like pizza or sex, even when it is bad it is pretty good. The Barnes has a lot of Cezanne and some very excellent examples. There were too many Renoirs for my liking—181 of them. But the Cezannes, Matisses, Picassos make up for the weaker work.
The next day I flew back to the pleasant weather of Southern California.
I am, for the first time, writing a post from my phone. I’ve been New York since Thursday, and I’ve been to the Morandi show at the Met twice. On this trip, I’ve been focusing on seeing museum shows. I am hoping see the Morandi’s one more time. It is almost unnecessary to write this, but Morandi is great. The show spans his career and it is interesting to see how he arrived at his still life paintings for which he is most known. I get back to LA on Monday, and will follow up on this and what else I did here.
I went down to the Los Angeles River today in the area affectionately called Frogtown. I was hoping and got some good pictures of the river that didn’t include and concrete or debris. The top image is close to how I would like the painting to be; the bottom is how it looks (depending on your monitor).
…in precooked form. I was told it normal for the green ones to be open—I also like the barnacle on the one on the right.
I finished the paintings for my upcoming gallery office exhibition on monday. After not doing too much since them, I am ready to start two new portraits tonight. I just took these images a few hours ago, lighting the model by candle, as I have been doing with the still life reference images.
For months, I have been posting the reference images of paintings I have been working on or I am going to make in the near future. I am now coming to the end of the first stage of this project—the completion of 5 paintings for an exhibition at Plane Space in two weeks. It is still wet but I didn’t want to photoshop it or wait for it to dry.
