Link to Post:
http://romanblog2.blogspot.com/2011/04/ralph-coburn.html
Vincent Romaniello features a work by painter Ralph Coburn. Coburn's work was the subject of a recent exhibition Ralph Coburn - France, Works on Paper 1949–1956 at David Hall Fine Art in Wellesley, Massachusetts. A contemporary of painter Ellsworth Kelly, Coburn accompanied Kelly to France during the early 1950's. This peroid was formative for both artists. The David Hall gallery website notes that in France "[Coburn] and Kelly discussed, explored and collaborated on numerous concepts hoping to resolve them into a visual language."
Coburn continued to paint throughout his career as a graphic designer at MIT. The gallery quotes painter Bernard Chaet, another friend of Coburn as saying: "Becoming a successful artist simply didn’t matter to Ralph. It was always about the exploration and execution of ideas, nothing more." A full length essay on Coburn's work by Rachael Arauz accompanies the recent exhibition.
Link to Post:
http://altoonsultan.blogspot.com/2011/04/at-met-some-portraits.html
Painter Altoon Sultan blogs her thoughts a wide range of portraits seen on her recent trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, beginning with Fayum funerary portraits and ending with Degas' Portrait of the Artist Tissot. Musing on "Netherlandish" portrait painters she writes: "[they] have magic in their art. How they are able to paint with such precision and so much realism every fold of skin and cloth, and still have an essence of living being emerge is a mystery..."
Link to Post:
http://lacma.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/new-acquisition-13th%E2%80%9314th-century-painted-panel/
As part of a series on recent acquisitions at LACMA, Virginia Fields blogs about Mexican panel painting from the Oaxaca/Guerrero region. About the LACMA panel Fields writes: "Its palette of strong primary colors and the prominent use of step-fret imagery throughout its composition... identify it as an extraordinary example of the artistic tradition referred to as the International Style, which dominated Mesoamerica during the Late Postclassic period (AD 1200–1400)."
Link to Post:
http://philipkochpaintings.blogspot.com/2011/04/intimate-interiors-what-we-learn-from.html
Painter Philip Koch blogs his thoughts on Vuillard's paintings of interiors: "Landscape painting might at first glance seem unrelated to Vuillard's interiors, but actually they're close cousins. Vuillard created what might be called "interior jungles" ... Anyone who's looked at the overwhelming complexity of a forest interior like those painted by a Barbizon School artist or an American like Worthington Witteredge has sensed this affinity."
Link to Post:
http://artinthestudio.blogspot.com/2011/04/art-context-in-provincetown.html
Beginning with her personal connection to Provincetown painting, Nancy Natale blogs a brief history of painting in Provincetown including the profiles of Charles Webster Hawthorne, Hans Hofmann, Henry Hensche, three "teachers who influenced generations of artists in and outside of Provincetown." Natale also discusses the divisions created by the teachers' "conflicting theories of painting." The post ends with a brief history of the Fine Arts Work Center and contemporary painters who live and work in Provincetown today.
Link to Post:
http://www.studiomatters.com/art/charlotta-westergren-rediscoveringng-the-past
Christopher S. Johnson discovers the paintings of Charlotta Westergren, an artist whose work engages with "Christian themes and imagery that defined the Western tradition for centuries." It's easy to forget that the freedom of limitations the materials and means of painting provide once also included prescribed subject matter, it was up to each artist to find a voice while painting primarily religious subjects. Johnson is happy to note that in Westergren's paintings, which find inspriation in a range of historical imagery, "The past is an undiscovered country."
Link to Post:
http://mnaves.wordpress.com/2011/04/22/70-years-of-abstract-painting-excerpts-at-jason-mccoy-gallery/
Coining the term "anti-immediate," Mario Naves' latest post finds the internal logic and "elusive sense of, not so much time away, as time passing" in the work of Helen Miranda Wilson to be a meaningful antidote to search engine driven culture. Wilson's work is on view in the exhibition 70 Years of Abstract Painting - Excerpts at Jason McCoy Gallery through May 20, 2011.
Link to Post:
http://newamericanpaintings.wordpress.com/2011/04/20/artist-vs-studio-margie-livingston/
As part of a series Artist vs. Studio, Erin Langner looks at the work of Seattle-based painter Margie Livingston. Livingston's current works, Paint Objects, are simultaneously painting and sculpture. Langer writes: "Livingston’s studio mirrors the direction of her practice through the presence of drills, saws and other power tools throughout the otherwise traditional painter’s studio."
Link to Post:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/john-seed/anne-harris_b_842877.html
John Seed profiles painter Anne Harris. He writes that Harris paints "women who transfix their viewers with projections of uncomfortable and uncanny emotional states. Each of her paintings is a paradox, a challenge, a chimera, and to some degree a self-portrait." The post is illustrated with a selection of Harris' paintings including a work in progress, a self-portrait in a red robe that Seed notes is "a step closer to Goya than any other artist working today."
Link to Post:
http://artinthestudio.blogspot.com/2010/03/virtual-connection-made-real.html
Nancy Natale tells a captivating story about how a comment on her blog led to a real life meeting with Veronique Lindenberg, the niece of painter Hedda Sterne. Lindenberg's first hand account of Sterne is as fascinating as are the images from the Hedda Sterne retrospective that accompany the post.
