and not a drop

alternating...current

This group show opens next Friday Oct 4. It has been curated by a local artist, Chris Sanders, and will include several of my paintings, some very recent, some from a few years back. Such as the one below, Warren St, Hudson (acrylic on linen, 16"x20") from 2009.

'The Lofts at Beacon' are located in a group of old factory buildings in various stages of renovation and are beautiful and spacious. The gallery is in one of these. Front St is off Route 52 in Beacon at a blinking yellow light, and if looking at Google Maps, it seems best to use 39 Front St. The reception next week is 6-9 pm, and as the card indicates, there will be a couple buses meeting trains from NYC.

claydough

Tiny sculptures made by my 9-year-old niece Lauren and me with polymer clay.

making us weirder

Those 6-ft plywood cutout figures I painted this summer? Here is the music video they were used for! I can't seem to embed the video or even a still, so click this YouTube link to see Stephen Clair's 'Love Makes Us Weird', produced and shot in Beacon and featuring many local faces. Of course I forgot to take photos of the shoot, the figures in action. I'm in it too, for a blink-and-you'll miss-it moment.

nature calls

These are some mural elements I just painted as a commission. The rooms are in a clubhouse overlooking the river. The animal shapes, the grass and branches were the decorator's vision, and I realized it was a coincidence that this project came along while I was making the horse paintings based on my own similar imagery. I like painting silhouettes of natural forms, and the way they look nearly life-size on a wall. The humor in exclaiming, "Nature calls!" and walking into a restroom to be greeted by deer and birds, only just now occurred to me.

 

financially stable

A few photos from the horse show opening. The gallery of ArtsWestchester is in a former bank, and my five paintings were installed in the vault, which looks now just like a small gallery room with a big round doorway. The circular door was about 2 ft thick. I decided to let all wordplay drop, once I said something about 'horse cents' and was met with a blank look. "Come on!" I laughed, sloshing my chardonnay.

The other three. (First two were in the previous post.) Left to right, Field Horse, Grazing Horse, and Night Horse.

Find the horse in this picture. As I'd said, difficult to photograph. But it's meant to be the color and texture both of a dirty-blond late-winter-colored horse and of the similarly dun-colored hill she grazed upon.

 Inadvertently knocking my painting askew. 

equine form

"A Horse Of Course" is a group show opening this Thurs Sept 12, 6-8 pm, at ArtsWestchester in White Plains (31 Mamaroneck Ave). Curated by Alan Reingold, it features "contemporary contemplations of the equine form," so I turned my hand to painting horses, or maybe it's the same horse five ways. (I know I posted the grass one recently.) Each are 15"x15" acrylic on wood. They proved difficult for me to photograph due to their color, texture and sheen, so I'll try again soon, because I liked how the 5 paintings developed and I want to share them.

When I was growing up, my family's palomino horse, Blondie, was a constant presence out back, grazing on the hill, following the goats, or nuzzling at my hand over the fence as I held out fistfuls of grass. I seldom rode but I liked watching her, the physicality of her shape against a backdrop of green or brown close-cropped grass a kind of reassurance. In winter, she stood in the snow at the edge of the barn as we flew past on our sleds. These paintings reflect those visual impressions of her inhabiting that space in nature, and, in a way, of nature inhabiting her.

at erpf gallery

These are my two pieces in the show that opened Aug 24 at the Catskill Center's Erpf Gallery in Arkville. It runs through Oct 25 and features 20 artists and writers that have participated in their residency program at their Platte Clove cabin. (Here's a recent post I wrote about it.) A slightly better photo of the leaf painting, 8"x10" oil, and the other is an 11"x14 drawing.
It was a nice opening and gave me an excuse to spend the rest of that sunny afternoon driving through the Catskills, buying plums, peaches and an ice cream cone, stopping in the towns of Margaretville, Phoenicia, where I found a leaf-colored vintage blouse at a store called The Mystery Spot, and Woodstock, where I dined healthily at the Garden Cafe. I love the whole Catskills-bordering-the-Hudson-Valley area, and enjoy every mini road trip I make there.