Tag Archives: painting

Landscapes with High Horizon Lines, Shot Through with Blood and Shrapnel

Posted on March 9, 2025 by JMN

His layers of paint, a mudlike impasto, oil and acrylic paints mixed with raw materials like soil, iron, straw and dead leaves, form deep furrows on the canvas. These landscapes, with van Gogh’s high horizon lines, all seem to be … Continue reading →

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Messy Bacon

Posted on March 5, 2025 by JMN

I know an artist who thinks her studio is cluttered. The photo is from this article. (c) 2025 JMN — EthicalDative. All rights reserved

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Did Adam and Eve Have Navels?

Posted on November 9, 2024 by JMN

“If all men are born free, how is it that women are born slaves?” (Mary Astell (1666-1731) The question of Adam’s and Eve’s navels has been discussed by theologians. It’s interesting, some have thought, for how it bears on the … Continue reading →

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‘The Gravity of Curiosity’

Posted on October 31, 2024 by JMN

… The gravity of curiosity. Our lives should be lived in interrogatives rather than imperatives. It’s more magnanimous to move through the world with wonder than with unearned certainty… [Poems] encourage us to ask the complicated questions, both of ourselves … Continue reading →

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‘It’s Death in a Modern Setting’

Posted on October 28, 2024 by JMN

Whether it’s taken as a grin or a snarl, all skulls bare their teeth; it goes with being a skull. But sometimes an art historian is in pursuit of a story to tell — it goes with being an art … Continue reading →

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‘Colorful Ooze’

Posted on October 19, 2024 by JMN

The Met’s new show… makes clear how astonishing it is that paint, of all things, became the center of Western art… There may never be another big American exhibition about this freakish little era, when artists figured out how to … Continue reading →

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Artists’ Palettes. They’re Artyfacts!

Posted on October 16, 2024 by JMN

The phrase “smeared with [a] personalised spectrum of paint” snagged me. The palettes are interesting in relation to who used them and/or for what they suggest about the painter’s “attack,” for lack of a better word. Fifty of these small … Continue reading →

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Turner, Monet, Morisot

Posted on October 11, 2024 by JMN

Volcanic ash from Mount Tambora’s eruption, as well as coal pollution, gave Turner glowing atmospheres to paint in his day. So did the toxic air enveloping the city of London which Monet responded to in some of his paintings a … Continue reading →

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Modernism in Amateur Painting

Posted on September 15, 2024 by JMN

It’s a tricky business this amateurism. Progress consists in putting a non-realistic spin on scenes and objects. Ideally, the subject should be rigorously interrogated, stripped to its essences, warped or scuffed up past anodyne mimesis. Seen, not depicted. Stamped with … Continue reading →

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Martha Diamond: ‘Looming Masses, Fleeting Vistas, Overwhelming Immersion’

Posted on September 9, 2024 by JMN

She completed an oil painting in one sitting, often mixing colors on the surface of the canvas. Martha Diamond’s approach to painting, and her execution, delight me. I dream of achieving something even approximating her studied generality in my own … Continue reading →

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