[Rick Mullin]

Yes, [well, there are some like me who think Picasso went to the circus] but it's like being asked to share poets we love and expecting something interesting to come from "Shakespeare!" or "Whitman!" I took Sharon's plea as in invitation to introduce artists, and the obvious pictures that came up were a bit disappointing.

I have read most of John Richardson's multi-volume life of Picasso, by the way. And, of course, there is plenty to discuss. It's just that.... never mind.

David Park, by the way, is not particularly obscure. But the Bay Area Figurative Movement, a reaction against abstract expressionism and the New York School specifically, oughta intrigue.

Also, I got off the dime here more because of Wes's cartoon than the previous entries.

[Rick Mullin]

Well, I don't mean to dampen discussion, and I realize I'm being a bit of a bastard. Nor am I saying much about the artists I'm bringing up, because of time constraints. I'll drop out.

RM

[ross hamilton hill]

Rick...
that was quick, you replied before I finished editing. You don't like circuses? but I know what you mean. Bit like Warhol…. although I like his work too.
a broken clown on an empty stage c'est moi

[Rick Mullin]

Dropping back in...

I'll admit to having dragged Weingarten in more than once....

There are painters like him that I think are doing something very heroic. They are translating the great tradition into contemporary and personal contexts.

Paul was once loosely associated with another painter named Simon Gaon, who in turn was a member of The Street Painters, a New York-based group. Here is one of his.



...and I will throw in a completely unrelated portraitist, a regionalist, David Bates, who paints the gulf coast (though I think he lives in Dallas).


[Very (too?) like Marden Hartley?]

[Wes Hyde]

Dave is a friend of mine, and one of the founders of the Outdoor Painter's Society (OPS). I don't think you can really make it out, but the hat I'm wearing in my avatar is from OPS. Dave gave it to me when we were painting in Dallas because the humidity was wreaking havoc on my hair, which was not short then.

[Julie Steiner]

Oooh, I like the David Bates portrait. It has that unapologetically flat, outlined, off-kilter look that I so enjoy in religious icons. Somehow the lack of perspective makes the emotion pop more.

[Rick Mullin]

Well, I like him. As I said, a regionalist (not that Gaon doesn't exude New York City). They used to have a huge painting of an arboretum by Bates at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. It hung in a large stairway by a two-storey window looking into Central Park. I consider him a guilty pleasure. When I first encountered him, I thought of Beckmann, but it is really Marsden Hartley that he emulates. Makes sense...an American!

I met him once 15 years ago when he assured me he would never paint again. He was making sculpture. Very charming guy. Unpretentious.

Wes, show us your work in the other art thread!

Rick

[Rick Mullin]

OK. Marden Hartley: Madawaska, Acadian Light-Heavy