New Year's Resolution

OK, here’s the deal. For 2010, two pictures a day. That’s it. No bitching & moaning. No opinions, no theory, no criticism (not really my strong suit anyway).

Since I got a nifty little scanner from an Office Depot that was going out of business, I have started to explore an entire personal history I didn’t realize I had in the mountain of sketchbooks that litter my studio. It’s like reading old diaries; each page suggests a direction I never took and it’s exhilarating to feel all the possibilites. A bit of navel-gazing, yes, but I think I’m old enough to do this now and it is very revealing how much I missed as I whizzed through my 20s, 30s, 40s and now nearly my 50s. So, in addition to the "real work" which is mostly oil on canvas & watercolor, I've got a slew of sketches, scribbles, collages, drawings and miscellany which has heretofore never seen the light of day.

My New Year’s resolution is to pare down the writing and just show the pix. I’m also dragging my studio partner of 30-plus years into this (he’s even older than me and is a stubborn cuss about not promoting his work). So I plan to show one of his & one of mine side-by-side. Every day? well, we’ll see.

Here goes:

click pix to enlarge

On the Beach

The Third Day of Christmas

I went for a long walk the other day with Tom, my studio partner and husband. We were still in that surfeited, post-holiday disorientation engendered by the nemontemi and as the weather was unseasonably California-esque, it seemed like quite the thing to do. [Today, however, we are suffering through “feels like” minus 19°F. with hard winds and threat of snow.]

The place we walked is accessible to anybody (now) and I highly recommend it. There is a beachy area (practically our backyard) just south of Liberty State Park at the edge of NY Harbor, which has recently been opened to the public.



Which isn’t to say that we didn’t used to bushwhack our way in in the old days when the only other living creatures were horseshoe crabs, shorebirds and a bum or two living in some abandoned concrete bunkers. I always thought of it as our own private reserve, but have since learned that lots of intrepid nature-lovers have also claimed it as their own virgin territory.



In any event, the day was mild and fine. Under the low, flat glare of the solstice, we wandered past the brand-new, ritzy golfcourse along a newly-built causeway and discovered that pathways to the interior are open to the public until March (when birds are expected to return for nesting). Liberty State Park is an important stopover on the Atlantic Coast flyby for migrating birds.



I had not been to this beach in over 15 years, when I used to come often to paint stuff I found there.



The most startling change I noticed was the absence of junk and garbage at the shoreline. Whereas we used to collect all kinds of interesting plastic, metal & wooden objects for Tom’s assemblage work, now there is nothing much besides oyster shells, some of them quite huge. I suppose this is an improvement.



The beach was beautiful and behind it were tidal flats crisscrossed with meandering streams, channels & rivulets: a real-time geology lesson and visual spectacle. I remember reading somewhere that the end-stage of a meander is an oxbow. The meanders we saw were deep channels in the harbor floor which at low tide were exposed as little rivers.







We arrived sometime before noon and noticed that the tide was still going out. After a couple of hours exploring some of our old favorite haunts and the scene of several of my paintings from the ‘90s, when we headed back, our pockets full of beach flotsam, the tide had definitely turned.



In the course of our small adventure, we saw, perhaps four people. Of course, when we got to the the parking lot where we had left the truck, the rest of the park was full as befits a holiday of good weather.

Way back in the ‘80s & ‘90s I painted a lot of imagery from this area and was glad to learn that the economic forces which have disfigured so much of the shoreline around the Hudson with high-rise luxury condos have not claimed this centrally-located paradise. Many of the “views” are essentially the same with one notable exception.

Christmas Eve 2009

Seasons' Greetings to all!
January will start off with a renewed effort to stay on top of this blog. Stay tuned!
You can visit my partner's and my websites at:
Thomas O'Flynn and Agnes de Bethune

click picture to enlarge

Exquisite Corpse

click to enlarge

Agnes deBETHUNE, Alaine BECKER, Leah K. TOMAINO, Untitled/Untitled/ Rooted, Graphite, collage, watercolor, chalk, pastel crayon, fiber, acrylic paint on paper, 2009, 30” x 22”
Courtesy of the artists and the Paul Robeson Galleries, Rutgers University.

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The Exquisite Corpse: Paul Robeson Galleries 30th Anniversary Exhibition
Exhibition on Display November 19, 2009 – April 8, 2010

In 2009 the Paul Robeson Galleries will celebrate three decades of activity. The Main Gallery was founded in 1979 to provide a forum for the work of professional artists, visual arts faculty, and student artists. Throughout its history, the Paul Robeson Galleries have mounted an interesting range of challenging and provocative exhibitions. To mark and celebrate our anniversary we invited artists of the region to play the surrealist drawing game – the Exquisite Corpse. This was a favorite surrealist game from the early 1900s, and continues to be played by artists around the world. Each collaborator adds to a drawing without knowing what has already been contributed. After all participants have finished the drawing is unfolded and revealed. The Paul Robeson Galleries will play the Exquisite Corpse with 92 artists to produce 30 drawings.

Artists Reception for The Exquisite Corpse: Paul Robeson Galleries 30th Anniversary Exhibition
Thursday November 19, 5pm – 7pm


For directions, CLICK HERE

Snapshots from the artists' reception:

A Place to Paint

click pix to enlarge

Autumn always gives me a case of the bends when I leave my summer studio and return to the city. The studio turns cold and forbidding in the winter months. By November, the water is shut off, the light is low and my fingers turn waxy & blue as the temperature drops. About the most productive thing that gets done is shivering to stay warm. I am reminded of Anne Truitt's account of gathering up her basket of paints from her unheated studio in DC and I feel embarrassed to be complaining at all. Her Daybook[s], were a guiding light when I was a younger artist—a model of toughness & steadfastness—but now, all I feel is old and cold. As my parents live nearby and it has fallen to my sisters and me to get them situated in a nursing home, I have become quite sensitive to the day-to-day insults we suffer with age. Suffice it to say, we've not had an easy time of it, but are close to a good solution for them.

I'll have to go back one more time before it freezes hard to put some anti-freeze in the toilet and turn the water barrels upside-down. The goldfish however, just hunker down at the bottom of the pond and wait for spring.



And because the roof on the north end of the building leaks mightily, we may be back up there with bales of shingles next summer. Last time I did that, I ended up with vicious tendinitis in both elbows simultaneously.



What I can never get over is the extreme contrast between winter and summer here in the Northeast (where I grew up, by the way). From June until October, which is my time to paint, it is a complete paradise. The building was originally a laundry built in 1928, which serviced the Navy as well as the big mansions on the other side of town. Strictly utilitarian, it has an odd architectural charm of its own. Over time, it was added to just like "the house that Jack built" and with each addition, gained a new section of the above-mentioned roof. By the time we got it, it was on the verge of disintegration.



I have fantasies of winterizing a portion of this vast space, but then, I also dream of moving to California. As it is, there's no money for either and with the current economy it will most likely stay that way for the foreseeable future.

We, that is my husband and I, discovered it back in the early 90s when we were rather desperately seeking to escape our crackhead-infested ghetto down in the city. So we've actually had the building for thirteen years and are still working our way around opening the boarded-up windows. These old steel-framed factory windows require a couple of months of restoration each. I admire (jealously, I admit) the windows out at DiaBeacon which were obviously removed, sand-blasted, lusciously powder-coated in pale gray and re-glazed off-site, using some sexy silicone-like material out of a tube, before being reinstalled. I imagine teams of professionals were involved. As we do not have a luxurious construction budget, our work involves removing the glass, grinding out the hardened old putty, chipping away rust & what remains of the original paint, priming & painting before setting in the new lights. Glazing in place can be tough; it would be easier to do it on a flat surface; and I still do it the old way with putty & a knife. The beds in these windows are deep—7/8"—so it takes a lot of DAP and a steady hand. Tedious work, although strangely soothing. But, nothing beats the drama of pulling down 50-year old plywood and letting in the light.



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The other fabulous find was the pond in the back. Our first year there, we realized that the level of the yard along the eastern side of the building was a little over a foot higher than the floor inside. There were moisture problems and my 90-year old aunt came visiting one day and declared: "You're going to have to lower the grade here." And so we did. With shovels. We dug up about 80' x 22' of crappy brick-laden dump. In so doing, we unearthed the foundation of what was once an enormous yellow brick smokestack and a rectangular pit filled with rubble and cinder. The pit turned out to have been a sump for the boiler and once we got it all cleaned out, it seemed only natural to fill it with water and fish and lilies.




The interior is completely unfinished still, but makes a good workspace. And nobody seems to notice the dirt constantly raining down from the undersides of the roof (because there is no ceiling).




We've tacked up just enough sheetrock to make a couple of painting walls and put in a small electric water heater.






Summertime, and the livin' is easy. But winter, not so much.

As I have run out of steam (and time), in the interest of keeping up with the blog, I'll post this now and write some more later. If you're interested, you can see some more pictures at flickr.

New Paintings 2009

Click Image to Enlarge

I've just finished a successful Open Studio (not so much in terms of sales, but rather in positive energy and some possibly important opportunities) and so now I'm taking a few free minutes to post the images. Well, it's actually more than a few—way more. First, there's the photography; then the mind-numbing image editing; then formatting everything for its ultimate destination; then writing new code for the webpage (darn picky, I need an assistant); then the upload (go have a martini or something while you wait); and now, I feel it is my responsibility to write cogent text about the whole experience of making these images, but the words won't come. All I can say is there are many Pink flowers and that I learned a whole lot about how to handle pink paint.

I have updated my website (which is long overdue for a redesign, but that's on next year's To-Do List) and I just finished uploading to flickr, so rather than clog the blog, I invite you to visit them. Flickr handles the images in various sizes very well, so I recommend a little excursion over there. My website contains other information about me and my work.

I currently maintain a presence on a small handful of other artist websites, all of which require tedious contortions and much agita to update, so I am reconsidering my involvement and their relative merit against the time and trouble they take. However, one of the worst-looking, and pokey of these is the old Irving Sandler Artists' File Online, and despite its uninviting interface, I will never give it up because it has garnered me more recognition than anything else over the years. I think I first sent my slides there in the early 80s when I was a young hopeful on the streets of New York, trying to get my foot in the door. Admittedly there were fewer artists then, but there were also way fewer doors. And they do not discriminate: my work is not exactly up their alley in terms of exhibition, but people have been finding me there for a long time, even when they had to punch through a carousel to do it.

Summer 2009

As of tomorrow, I will be officially away-for-the-summer working on a bunch of new paintings. The watercolors are nearly all done, but I couldn't get them photographed in time to post today. I will be totally "out-of-the-loop", "off-the-grid", "under-a-rock", "outside-the-box", "over-the-rainbow", "somewhere", but without a computer, TV, intenet or email. So, for anyone who actually reads this: "Hasta luego", "See you in September".

Chicago in the rain

Just back from Chicago where I installed another trade show at the Merchandise Mart for Neocon 2009 which opens today. The Mart, once the largest building in the world for floor space (before the Pentagon was built) is a paean to the giants of good old-fashioned American retail.

Click pix for closeup; they are big pictures with lots of detail

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Thank goodness this little chunk of dayjob appeared in time to float me into my summer's work (I have 7 oil paintings and about 10 watercolors in the works). I feared I would be surviving on the fumes of last year's almost non-existent income—not exactly conducive to doing good work—although, collecting the money will probably take til fall. I enjoy these occasional junkets to Chicago and also the fact that my food and lodgings are on someone else's dime. But other than walking everywhere and taking a few moments on the Oak Street beach in the early morning, it's usually a stressful push, as exhibits tend to be.


My hotel room looked out onto Mies van der Rohe Way at the massive and magnificent Hancock Building. The garage sort of looks like the "Guggenheim of Parking"





It rained steadily the whole time I was there and I witnessed that phenomenon so typical of Chicago skyscrapers that I rarely see in New York: the clouds come down and hug the tops of the buildings. I wonder what it's like to be inside up there.



The sidewalks were full of flowers.



Chicago is a great walking city and there are lots of underpasses & overpasses to get pedestrians safely across some daunting traffic situations, like Lake Shore Drive at rush hour. The beach is very public and heavily used; it appears they put a lot into maintenance & upkeep.



Someone had the brilliant idea of planting palm trees on the shores of Lake Michigan. "Surf's Up!"




And then, there is architecture...everywhere!



I can't quite figure out the difference between New York and Chicago: is it the scale, density, design??? Never mind that New York has only one Louis Sullivan building. Chicago is very grand, but it is s-o-o-o midwestern. I feel like a foreign tourist there.

Each block on North Michigan Avenue had a difference scheme/theme of plantings. Some were a bit overwrought, but all demonstrated civic pride and attention to detail. The crazy-Lego-looking water tower, one of the few buildings to survive the Great Chicago Fire, is a wierd delight.


The Chicago River is a defining artery. I walked east on Kinzie from the Mart towards the Wrigley building and managed to catch this drawbridge going up to the tune of loud metallic screeching and clanking.


Looking south on State Street: (as if I could forget where I was) the famous Chicago Theater sign; and, of course, shop windows on North Michigan Avenue


I got finished early on the last day and so went to the Museum of Contemporary Art. I confess, I found it lacking. The Buckminster Fuller show was worth the price of admission ($12) but the museum doesn't appear to have much of a collection: one Franz Kline and a handful of emerging/unknown-to-me artists. The Calder show was a pitiful assortment of small pieces all jammed together in what appeared a dead end hallway. And the featured Olafur Eliasson was a relentless barrage of annoyingly gimcrack "experiences" having to do with reflections, changing colors, prismatic effects, moss growing out of a wall, some hokey geometry projects and I don't know what all. Kind of like a theme-park for the not-hoi-polloi. I got nothing from it except for the installation entitled Beauty, 1993, a shower of mist in a dark room with some strategically-positioned spotlights [kind of echoed what was going on outside with the weather and it was pretty].



As photography was forbidden, this was the only piece I snapped, only because I could get away with it. We were treated to Eliasson earlier last year at the MoMA, and some of it worked better there. For instance, the swinging fan was pretty exciting in New York; it had a vertiginous, slightly dangerous-cut-your-head-off quality that was entirely missing in the Chicago space. For one thing they had it in a tiny room where it looked absolutely ridiculous. But, I tend to get my back up when an artist suggests that I need assistance to use my sensory apparatus to feel the real world. I don't find it entertaining or intellectually stimulating to be prodded and hectored by artistic moralizing. If I want a mind-altering experience, which I don't, I would choose the Cyclone Racer or the Hall of Mirrors at a bona fide amusement park.

Once outside, I realized I'd better hightail it to the hotel if I didn't want to get soaked and have to freeze to death on a soggy flight back. But, there in the park across from the main door was this Deborah Butterfield and I was entranced. I have long been a fan of this sculptor.


So, I hung around long enough to snap some shots between the raindrops. Of course, getting out of O'Hare was the usual nightmare and it was a bumpy ride home in the rainstorm. If this client likes the work enough, maybe I'll get the gig again next year. Then maybe I'll be able to afford the Art Institute where I can go back to visit my old favorites. Or maybe I'll go here instead; these folks seem to have the right idea: