Nanjing Massacre Museum

Nanjing

Nanjing (southern capitol in Mandarin)---its a gritty urban/back alley with almost tropical trees city. There's a hazy pollution over the sprawl of big city towers, tiny shops & restaurants, street cooks, sidewalk bicycle menders and modern supermarkets. The alleyways that meander through the Nanjing University area are full of mopeds, bicycles, people on foot and cars honking their way through. For breakfast we went out for baozi at a small stall where the line runs over the tilted sidewalk into the street. The woman serving us clearly knew Virgil and recognized me as his Mom. Everyone seems amazed when I speak in Chinese. I've gotten good at pretending I understand everything they say. There are well-fed feral cats, wandering unattended (also well-fed and healthy) dogs and some beautiful blue birds with long flared tail feathers and black-capped heads. Last night there were a lot of tiny fires against the curbs--their coals pulsing red in the dark--Virgil said it might be because it was the winter solstice. The city has its own ordinary rhythm that is not that of NYC yet not utterly unfamiliar. The food is wonderful. Last night we went to a local place and I had delicate dumplings and a clear broth noodle and vegetable soup. For both of us dinner was 14 kuai (just over $2). At the table next to us several young women were discussing shuai ge (cute guys).

CHINA

Going to China...going to CHINA in 48 hours

Thanksgiving Roses

Thanksgiving 2010

Green Window

mugshot

Ganesh and the Autumn

An Explanatory Note

In reference to recent painting, The Mermaid's Feet, a brief little aside, illustration style.

Pen & Ink

Went to the Spanish drawing show at the Frick...they had a roomful of Goyas. Lots of sepia ink and red chalk beauties. So I came home and reacquainted myself with my pen and little bottle of ink...

The Mermaid's Feet

Angelucci

Sally's Lights & Beans

My friend Sally put up an installation in an empty Brooklyn lot about 3 months ago. It involved a vertical pattern of mesh with little red lights, and planting various kinds of ornamental (but edible) beans and corn--that would grow up through the mesh among the lights. Here are some photos of the installation at night from this weekend:

Portrait of Steve

A Day, Hot

The temperature is in the nineties. When you go out the sun grabs at you and insists on piercing you with heat. No floating along allowed, just plain old fire arrows.
Hid in the loft and watched Ong Bak 2, a movie of incredible physicality (Tony Jaa), beautiful & rainy scenery, and a rather bleak, tortured ending. Sometimes I just love a balls-to-the-wall martial arts movie.
Working my way through the decades and I still love the adrenalized grace of extreme movement.

afternoon light

Everyday around four the sun finds a place in between buildings, at a perfect south western angle that allows it to pour directly through my windows. Its a rich afternoon light, not a blue and lemon morning recipe. I would say that it has a butterscotch thinned with the milk of babies eyes flavor.
It comes every day that there is no overt New Yorkish cloud cover. It is always a surprise. Its main real estate encompasses the shapes the windows cut for it, but its reign is larger. It spreads a luminance that hits the paintings like lasers on fine cut jewels.
...as though it knows they are here waiting to show there true meanings, their real colors in its bath. Waves or particles, I won't quibble. I'll take them all, like a lover with many faces.

Sketch for Steve's Portrait

Red, Prime & Dusk

Red wine, prime numbers and dusk. And then add in thought experiments. Deadly, wonderful thought experiments. How different are they from the image in your head that you wish to put in oil and ground dirt on stretched linen? Not so much--but certainly harder to articulate, the image, that is. I've hung out with enough philosophers to understand that. The word is king, the sentence is kingdom.
I just make paintings. Magic, still. Perhaps that is the gulf between us--I really do see it as magic, not logic. My logic is a skipping stone, and a plunge into deep waters is sometimes as useful as the successful voyage across the surface...ha ha !
red wine and prime numbers
late summer dusk

Portrait of Claudio

Pink Umbrella & such

Claudio ( in progress) and Valeria on the wall watch as I hang my umbrella on the pulled-back trapeze to dry. Thus ensues a certain adventure in visuals:

Portrait of Valeria

New York, again

So last night I went out into the summer evening, the people everywhere on the sidewalks walking. Every color, every shape, every tonation...I swam with the current and I swam against it & through it. Every face was a portrait, every building a face. The tide took me up and forgave me for being in other cities and other countries. For loving other faces and other evenings. It didn't clean itself up for me or ask where I'd been or even why I might have been there. It loved me anonymously, unconditionally, without promises or proofs, and laughingly personal.
Home again.

Dinner in Empoli

After having driven all day through the beautiful hills of Umbria, stopping in Assisi, and then San Gimignano in Tuscany we made our way to Empoli and Claudio.
Claudio met us in his old black car in summer dark with his new muscles and russet and green eyes.
He served us dinner on a black table with black plates and wine glasses. There was a red rose. Dinner was a Greek salad and cold pasta with wine we had brought from San Gimignano. After myriad conversations about the particles that we are all made of we went out for ice cream and a walk through the town. An ancient fountain spoke to us, while lions guarded the water.

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