Tag Archives: painting

‘Modest, Solitary Buildings Were Often Her Subject Matter’: Gretchen Dow Simpson (1939-2025)

Posted on May 10, 2025 by JMN

While modest, solitary buildings were often her subject matter, Ms. Simpson’s work was not purely representational. A former commercial photographer, she applied a telephoto approach to many of her paintings, zooming in on windows, doorways or rooftops to emphasize the … Continue reading →

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I Need Some Writer’s Block

Posted on March 26, 2025 by JMN

Really, I should draw, paint and read more, write less. It’s a constant struggle to pipe down.  Poetry, for one thing, triggers me. Intending to read a bait of versifying, before I know it I’m a keyboard Roman candle ejaculating … Continue reading →

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The ‘Color(ed) Theory’ of Artist Amanda Williams

Posted on March 17, 2025 by JMN

“There is something anthropomorphic about this work… I didn’t force it. That’s what made it powerful.” (Amanda Williams) In her studio, Williams experimented with her Prussian blue, layering, diluting and pouring the paint, letting it crack, pool and bleed across … Continue reading →

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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

Posted in Commentary | Tagged , | 1 Comment

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 →

Posted in Anthology | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

‘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 →

Posted in Quotations | Tagged , | 6 Comments