Toulon

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'The painter must give a completely free rein to any feeling or sensations he may have and reject nothing to which he is naturally drawn.'  (Lucian Freud)

Renard

'The want of logic annoys.  Too much logic bores.  Life eludes logic, and everything that logic alone constructs remains artificial and forced.'  (André Gide)

coloring some drawings over the last week or so.

les ardennes

10" x 14" (newly revised)

anything that is too stupid to be spoken is sung.  (Voltaire)

Bram Bogart

I dreamt I woke to a hole in the ceiling and one in the floor like a meteor hit the building and punched right thru.  was calling to get some attention on it.

AbEx painter extraordinaire Bram Bogart has died.  he was born in 1921.  I met him in '01 and we talked at length about Belgium and methods and aspirations.  he wanted to design for opera.

Intermezzo

'Conversation in real life is full of half-finished sentences and overlapping talk.  Why shouldn't painting be too?'  (Edgar Degas)

olive oil

'The man who cannot visualize a horse galloping on a tomato is an idiot.' (André Breton)

pink house

'Perspective is a ghastly mistake which it has taken four centuries to redress.'  (Georges Braque)

these are both revisions.  started something new and it looks really kookie.

Etude

'Colors pursue me like a constant worry.  They even worry me in my sleep.'  (Claude Monet)

Trying some stuff I had around just to see what it does.  mixing it up a bit I guess.

I heard a story from a financial advisor about St Peter's Church at Citicorp;  When the church was being built in 1977 they commissioned DeKooning to do a very large altar piece for the sanctuary. it came as 3 panels and the reaction of the board was less than positive.  they  were stashed away and forgotten but 2o years later when the church was strapped for cash the financial advisor asked about them no one had any clue where they might have gone.

Allemande

'I paint German artists whom I admire.  I paint their pictures, their work as painters, and their portraits too.   But oddly enough, each of these portraits ends up as a picture of a woman with blonde hair.  I myself have never been able to work out why this happens.'  (George Baselitz)

Oostende

my first James Ensor painting.  it was a carnival painting at MoMA.  it was right around the corner from the Cézanne Bather at the entry to the gallery.  Okay, The Bather, the birth of modern painting, I could swallow that.  but around the corner there was this weird little canvas with revelers in comedia type masks.  and how the hell did they get in the museum?

Corsica

the museum was closing and we were in the Cézanne room.  I hadn't realized how much I love those bowls of fruit.

Cherries

"I believe that one thinks much more soundly if the thoughts arise from direct contact with things, than if one looks at things with the aim of finding this or that in them."  (Vincent van Gogh)

Lemeshev

'Space and space again, is the infinite deity which surrounds us and in which we are ourselves contained.'  (Max Beckmann)

dreamt of a talking cat.  no, wasn't Master and Margarita.  was just so amazed at the talking didn't remember what she said, alas!

Cocteau

'To me the poets are closer than I am to the idea of voice, to a sort of primeval song that we all participate in.'  (Francesco Clemente)

Orpheus

'Poetry's role is to provide spontaneous individual candor as distinct from manipulation and brainwash.'  (Allen Ginsberg)

Le Pont Mirabeau

'Things are not difficult to make;  what is difficult is putting ourselves in the state of mind to make them.'  (Constantin Brancusi)

Persephone

'Great wisdom is generous;  petty wisdom is contentious.'  Zhuangzi

Toscano

'The harder you look, the harder you look.'  (Christopher Wool)

Pompeii

didn't go when I had the chance, wandered the streets of Naples instead.  the fish market was intense.  there were 20 varieties of snails.  to have that at your doorstep...

Cortot

recently started loving Schubert.  what a surprise!  I used to loath everything about him.  and I was shocked to find what a good read Metamorphosis turned out to be.  I had heard about a guy waking up to find that he'd turned into a cockroach, but I had no inkling what an ambiguous tale it would turn out to be.