Brenda Goodman's Art Influences

"Burial" oil on wood 52x56 2010



"Hard Choice" oil on wood 60x64 2010

The other day these images appeared on facebook. They are artist, Brenda Goodman's most recent paintings. She has posted them on her new blog. These paintings are the gutsiest, most heart felt paintings I have seen in a long, long time.



"Crossing Over" oil on wood 60x64 2009

She says,
"these are the influences that first come to mind."

Rembrandt Soutine Dekooning
Dubuffet
Vuilliard
Gorky
Ensor
GustonBaconTerry Winters
Morandi
Hans Josephsohn


"Escape" oil on wood 52x56 2010

DB: A lot of people talk about Guston being important for their work, especially people of my generation, but you had an actual relationship with him.

BG: He really liked my work and we exchanged a few letters. But the thing about Guston, as with de Kooning, and as with Gorky, Soutine, and Dubuffet, which were the big ones in my life––then Morandi later on––you have a connection to them. You’re on the same wavelength, or whatever you want to call it. You have this affinity with certain artists and there’s a reason why you’re influenced by them, because there’s something of them already inside you.

From AN INTERVIEW WITH BRENDA GOODMAN; INTRODUCTION BY DAVID BRODY

The Etiquette of a Studio Visit

Laura Moriarty holding a chunk of wax

Laura Moriarty's new work

Last January (09) I had on my agenda to get myself out of my studio and into other artist's studios. So I slowly began to do some local studio visits. Now, a year later, I am working on a presentation for the Fourth Annual Encaustic Painting Conference in June at Montserrat College of Art in Beverly, Mass.
It is called the:

Encaustic Studio
A digital look into artists' studios from around the country. We will be “visiting” artists in their studios and viewing their set up, ventilation, tools, storage, shipping, their creative process and, of course, their work. The next best thing to an actual studio visit!

I have done several studio visits so far with more to come.
In the process, I am learning the etiquette of a studio visit.
It is an interesting dance.


Marybeth Rothman at her thinking desk




MaryBeth Rothman's work on the wall: encaustic /mixed media




My "working" list of Do's and Don'ts:

Don't

Talk about yourself, your work,etc. (at least not too much)
If you don't know what to say, be honest and say you will think about the work and respond later.
If you are not in the mood, don't appreciate the person's work, or aren't interested. Don't go in!!
When you walk in to a person's space filled with their art and say nothing; that says everything and it's not pretty.
Do
plan to look and listen.
spend time.
drink tea (or something).
ask questions.
look at everything, the walls, the drawers, the floor, the work: all are clues to the artist's world.
leave yourself at the door and step into the artist's shoes.

Be sure to check out Joanne Mattera's blog for a great studio visit post.


Pam Farrell's studio wall and floor



Pam Farrell new work : oil on canvas

Steven Baris

Steven Baris is an artist working in Philadelphia.The paintings are oil and acrylic. I suggest going to his website and looking at each series. Each one shows an intense and focused exploration of ideas and attributes. I am attracted to the wonderful use of color, space and use of transparency and opaqueness.




Statement:

I characterize my paintings as spatial images. Space is the lens through which I best visualize the contemporary moment. Even more, it is how I make sense of my own biography, having grown up in decidedly non-urban spaces of Indian reservations throughout the West. Having since migrated to the most extensively built-up region of the continent, I have become interested in the derivative spaces of thoroughly constructed environments. My paintings attend to the spatial consequences of the countless structures that we routinely pass by and occasionally enter.


My influences are many and extend into the early 20th century, including works by El Lissitzky, Moholy Nagy, and Stuart Davis. I am interested in how these and other more recent artists have registered their own contemporary moment and the unprecedented transformations of interior and exterior space.

New Work

Whisper 2 10 x10 encaustic


Archway 12 x 12 encaustic



The Element of Air 24 x 24 encaustic and oil




Transparent Thinking 24 x 24 encaustic and oil



The Other Side 24 x 24 encaustic and oil




Whirlwind 24 x 24 encaustic and oil


Below the Surface 24 x 24 encaustic and oil



Whirlwind 2 24 x 24 encaustic and oil

Point of Departure

Point of Departure 48 x 48 oil and wax LPressman


My favorite time of the exhibition process is after the show is hung and before the official opening. The stress, worry, and obsessive nit picking is (mostly) over. I can spend some time with the work as it lives outside of the studio.

And, the studio is almost empty!!



Point of Departure
Visual Arts Center of New Jersey
January 15 – March 19, 2010
Opening Reception: Friday January 15th, 2010

Installation photos:

Matthew Langley's art influences

Fields of Mars, 2009
Acrylic and paper on panel, 9" x 12"
Courtesy of Blank Space Gallery, New York

I've come across Matthew Langley's work on several blogs and enjoy looking at it on his website. One needs to spend some time with each piece as they reveal themselves over time-a mark here, a change in color and texture there. He incorporates a wonderful use of line -the grid, of course- with drawn lines of color and surface, along with a mindful use of the edge. I find the work playful with a rich painter's vocabulary. I am looking forward to seeing his work in January.

Matthew Langley / Heejo Kim, Blank Space, Chelsea, NY
January 14 - February 2nd

Supercrush 9 x12 acrylic and paper on panel 2009

Sunshine Playroom, 2009 Acrylic and paper on panel, 9" x 12"


For Blinky, 2009 Acrylic and paper on panel, 9" x 12"

Here are Matthew's picks:

Jasper Johns
Robert Ryman
Mark Rothko
Robert Rauschenberg
Anselm Keifer
Egon Schiele
Ellsworth Kelly
Barnett Newman
A R Penck
Phillip Guston
Matisse
Neil Jenney (the "bad paintings" in particular)
Frank Stella (the early black paintings)

Sunflower oil on canvas, 60" x 50"Collection; Ernst and Young
On Developing New Images.

The artworks come from a series of divergent strategies. One of building and extending - the other of reducing and minimizing. These disparate approaches are not a way to impose meanings on the work, but can be viewed as a metaphoric crossroads. This crossroads is about extending the relationship of these different approaches, while at the same time allowing the viewer the liberty of time for further reading of the work. The image making that comes from this strategic foundation will be clear, concise and rational, while at the same time allowing for a sense of community and/or contemplation to develop in and around the artworks. The artworks are not linear narratives, this allows the element of time to be stretched or compressed to accommodate the viewer. This flexibility to time as well as environment allows the artwork to reveal itself in slower and calmer ways than an artwork that is based only on the relationship of drama and detail of the forms presented inside of it, while allowing those with a more compressed time line to react to the base elements of the composition and painterliness of the overall approach. This open ended approach is central to the artworks I create and allows them to be developed with a non-specific exactness.February 2009

Super Nature, 2008 Acrylic on paper, 18" x 15"

On Names.
Titles have become critical to my work. Primarily they re-establish a connection to the visible world and hopefully trigger a series of associations and ideas that are related between the artwork and the connotation in the viewers awareness. I avoid the descriptive and ordered approach (blue, or number 12, etc.) as well as using “untitled”. I view titles as an approach to open the viewer to a thought process that may influence the subject at hand. This could be viewed as a shorthanded poetry or similar device that allows further thought about or in connection to the artworks. January 2009

Clues

As I struggle to clarify, simplify and rewrite my artist's statement I am struck by the clues I find in my photos:





Looking from the inside out of Cora Jane Glasser's studio


Looking from the inside out of Cora Jane Glasser's studio