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Tag Archives: Figures

Back in Gray

For any artist, I think, regularity of work is essential.  For an artist like me who does other work to make a living, it can be very difficult to keep the creative practice vital and central.  I hold my life drawing practice as a constant.  Sometimes in my life I’m working on special creative projects, [...]

Navigational Perception

Synchronicity is a concept describing how seemingly unrelated things take on meaning by being experienced concurrently.  Years ago a friend gave me the Fall 1991 issue of the magazine “Whole Earth Review”.  It is 144 pages densely filled with a wide variety of articles on technology, ecology, and human potential – the promo on the [...]

Painters of Light

Thomas Kinkade, “Painter of Light (TM)” passed away earlier this month.  His psychedelically colorful fantasy landscapes are too sugary for my taste, but he’s a fascinating cultural figure of our time.  It strikes me that his technically accomplished, rather surrealistic style would have been embraced by the contemporary art world if he had presented it [...]

Ritual of Enchantment: Human Clay

One of the most venerable functions of art is to transform the environment, to create a sacred space or a magical moment, to inspire the imagination or to open the mind to contemplate mysteries.  This may be the impulse behind the painted caves of the Ice Age, and it is why places to pray and [...]

Collector of Souls: Alice Neel

  Alice Neel (1900-1984) is always described as an artist that was slow to find recognition.  It’s true, but I think it’s also true that her brilliance was of a kind that is only achieved through maturity and persistence.  Our culture likes to think that a genius is a genius, that they must be incandescent in [...]

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