Tag Archives: painting

Rooms That Photograph Like Paintings

Posted on October 31, 2025 by JMN

“I’m going to hesitate and say it’s settled into what it’s meant to be.” (Martyn Thompson) I was taken with the handmade rooms in Martyn Thompson’s Sydney, Australia home. They’re atmospherically profiled in the photographs. Each shot has a painterly … Continue reading →

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‘What Is an Image?’

Posted on October 19, 2025 by JMN

The only constants in his oeuvre, which takes in every traditional genre… are change, relentless curiosity and, perhaps most of all, an insistent question: What is an image? (Emily LaBarge) [Gerhard Richter’s] painting “Tisch” (1962), has the daunting catalog position … Continue reading →

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Orison for Rubble

Posted on October 1, 2025 by JMN

Depending on whether I’m going or returning, not long before or after my crossings of the mighty, tea-dark Brazos near the Arredondo bridge, I pass what appears to be a Christian church whose name has kerygma in it.  For a … Continue reading →

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Untie These Hidebound Eyes, Unbind These Hogtied Hands

Posted on July 12, 2025 by JMN

Jason Farago-rhymes-with-Chicago writes a deep, reflective appreciation of Cézanne’s work, calling Cézanne the first painter he ever loved.  BC*: For six centuries, ever since some scientifically minded Florentines had developed rules of perspective that made art look more like life, … Continue reading →

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Guide for the Perplexed

Posted on July 1, 2025 by JMN

“… When I don’t know what to do next, I tend to throw everything at it, be as expressive or as minimalist or as detailed as I can, reach for bright colours or keep it monochrome, look intensely or scribble … Continue reading →

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‘Ebullient, Rigorous and Boastfully Esoteric’

Posted on June 23, 2025 by JMN

Walker Mimms’s treatment of Hilma af Klint is elegant, lyrical, explicit. Ebullient, rigorous and boastfully esoteric, these “Nature Studies,” as she called them, reveal the didactic side of a pioneer in nonliteral art. This is an economical show of some … Continue reading →

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‘His Technique Can Be Potently Slapdash’

Posted on May 31, 2025 by JMN

If the images in the survey feel more like news than comment, that’s partly because we can sense the press photos Shahn used as his sources. Though his paintings themselves aren’t close to photorealistic — his technique can be potently … Continue reading →

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Toyin Ojih Odutola Draws Loud

Posted on May 25, 2025 by JMN

I like how Toyin Ojih Odutola assembles faces from facets, a treatment I strive increasingly, if feebly, to approximate. I describe it to myself in personal shorthand as “envisaging”: implementing visage as a sort of ‘scape rather than anatomical likeness … Continue reading →

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Purloining With Pizzazz: Wayne Thiebaud

Posted on May 18, 2025 by JMN

This copying work helped Thiebaud figure out his own solutions to artistic problems. I blush to own it, but I was never keen on pointillism. For all that it purported to be scintillating, it has a diffuseness that feels static. … Continue reading →

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You Shall Not Crucify Mankind on a Cross of… Crypto

Posted on May 11, 2025 by JMN

With apologies to William Jennings Bryan, it’s called a “rug pull”: A celebrity touts a new digital coin, prices soar and then insiders who own most of the coins pull the rug: They sell their stakes for a big profit … Continue reading →

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