Summer Preview

Summer Trees, 16″X20″.

The pleasures of late spring and early summer as they affect my studio experience and the tasks related to showing and selling my work are too many to list. Must-mentions: painting with windows and door open to the yard and the stream behind my studio; drying my paintings in the sun in my yard so that I can resume work on a second layer within just a day; doing my daily work on the computer sitting on my screened-in back porch with the sound of the stream as accompaniment; and driving my work around for deliveries surrounded by the visual joy of many-colored lilacs, poppies creating a splash of brilliant orange next to purple dame’s rocket, and amazing, shifting, spring-soft greens.

Ellsworth Kelly at Thompson Giroux Gallery

I had the pleasure of attending an exhibition and 90th birthday party for Ellsworth Kelly on May 31st, the day of his actual birthday, at my gallery in Chatham, NY,  Thompson Giroux. Chatham is familiar turf for Ellsworth– the dinner  was thrown in the same space that he rented for his first upstate studio back in the early ’70s, and is of course the source for the title of his “Chatham Series”.

It was lovely to see again the botanical prints that we studied and admired back when I was in art school as iconic line drawings from life—spare, fluid, and subtly quirky.

I was most interested to read that Ellsworth based his abstract paintings on “observed reality”, a departure from the ethic of the day. Comparing this with the work of the abstract artists that I am closest to, Jenny Nelson, Melinda Stickney-Gibson and Marie Vickerilla,, whose imagery evolves from within the process of developing each canvas (and whose shows I have also recently seen) has set me thinking. I plan a blog post on this discussion, coming up next.

Then, I may not be able to resist jumping into the issue of prices and how crazy the art market is. Discussing an artist whose work brings some of the highest prices of any living artist in the same breath as three mid-level artists makes it hard to avoid that particular elephant in the room.

What is the realtionship between quality and price in the art market? Why do these four artists have such different price points?

Shandaken Art Studio Tour July 20-21

Save-the-date for the Shandaken Studio Tour, when it is my pleasure to arrange and open up my studio to new folks doing the tour, my collectors, fellow artists, and friends. This is a busy weekend for me, though oddly grouped sometimes (last year about half the people who came by seemed to be there just after 2pm on Sunday!). Here are a few of the pieces that I plan on showing.

“Rare Summer Silence”, 20″x30″.

“Mountain Vista/Max Patch”, 24″x48″.

“Unreservedly Summer”, 10″X30″.

Favorite Pieces at my Galleries

Within the past month six of my galleries have either received new work or been delivered the whole grouping that they will show for the season. I have chosen a favorite piece from each location to show you below—I hope you get a chance to visit these wonderful galleries!

“Ongoingness of Summer”, 3 panels of 24″X30″/ea., at Gold Gallery in Boston.

“Cranberry Bog in Reds”, 48″x24″, Van Ward Gallery, Ogunquit, ME.

“Spring Light”, 36″X36″, Chace-Randall Gallery, Andes, NY.

“Sundrenched Saltmarsh”, 20″x16″, Julie Heller Gallery, Provincetown, MA.

“Oak Bluffs Morning Fog”, 3 panels of 14″x18″/ea., Dragonfly Gallery, Oak Bluffs, MA.

 

“Overlook Summit View”, 24″X48″, Albert Shahinian Fine Art, Rhinebeck, NY.

An Invitational Show in Newburgh

“Particularity of Place”, 36″x36″, one of three pieces of mine included in the show.

A Few Recent Sales

“Trove: From the Road”, 16 paintings of 3″X5″/ea., 22″X28″ framed. This sale was quite a story, involving a trip to Chicago where it hung perfectly on a particular wall, then back to my studio where it was almost shipped off to my Boston gallery; then the intervention of a purchase as a generous gift so that it ended up back in Chicago in its perfect spot. There were several co-conspiritors on this one!

“Mutable Sky”, 20″x40″, to a lovely home in Woodstock.

Upcoming painting workshops

Landscape and Mood, the Woodstock School of Art, June 24-26.  http://woodstockschoolofart.org/

Landscape and Mood, The Provincetown Artists Association and Museum, September 16-19  (this will be on their website soon). http://www.paam.org/mspaam.html