Wolff Brain

4 Birds

2012-02-11T14:38:00.002-05:00

Interior Winter Landscape

2012-01-28T18:08:00.011-05:00

During the winter the interior geography becomes the plaything of your eyes, giving up details and colors in the midst of overcast days and cold sidewalks...

Waltz

2012-01-25T07:47:00.002-05:00

Much better photo of Waltz

Waltz

2012-01-11T10:46:00.006-05:00

Sunrise in India

2012-01-03T08:00:00.002-05:00

Gardens at Meherazad

2012-01-03T07:53:00.013-05:00

Pilgrimage to India

2012-01-03T04:55:00.005-05:00

At Meherazad

2012-01-02T16:07:00.006-05:00

Meherabad, India

2012-01-01T18:47:00.010-05:00

Wolff in India

2012-01-01T08:12:00.002-05:00

India

2011-12-31T17:35:00.004-05:00

Strange recipe

2011-11-27T16:16:00.003-05:00

Take one really good Thanksgiving with friends and offspring in a Hudson Valley hill house, mix briskly with a game of pictionary which you won, and then add in, a day later: sitting and watching Requiem for a Dream.
There is no appropriate word for the melange of flavors and light emotion giving way to an excruciating narrative that is akin to ripping your heart out and eating it.
Meanwhile the next painting is brewing its own dark and light story. Thankfully.

Walking Home

2011-11-08T11:03:00.001-05:00

Cat on Thinner Ice

2011-10-24T12:18:00.000-04:00

Cat on Thin Ice

2011-10-18T15:36:00.000-04:00

Water Cut

2011-10-16T12:18:00.001-04:00

Indian Summer NYC

2011-10-10T08:48:00.004-04:00

In the north-eastern quadrant of Central Park is the Conservatory. It is a formally gardened expanse with tunnels of wisteria and exactingly laid-out arrangements of wild grasses and autumn-blooming flowers with the occasional southern exotic flinging huge jungle leaves up against the box, aster and wild roses. The late afternoon sun drenches the green and causes it to rise and drift in the air, an atmosphere of dense otherness. Further north is a loopy, curving pond with ducks streaking across the dark reflected surface and cutting it up into molten calligraphy as they alight. Seagulls fly over, people walk, scooter and talk. A bunch of guys try to rescue their football that is drifting out into the water by slashing at it with a willow frond.
Everywhere you look is a perfect painting......
Its Indian Summer in NYC.

Pink Tree

2011-10-08T14:29:00.001-04:00

new watercolor

2011-09-11T10:59:00.004-04:00

this is on heavy watercolor paper off a roll---its 41 by 55 inches

Fairytale

2011-08-21T21:57:00.002-04:00

Gato Loco in the rain

2011-08-16T10:09:00.014-04:00

Green & Green & Ganesh

2011-08-10T21:40:00.006-04:00

Milkshake Ganesh

2011-08-09T20:07:00.001-04:00

...out in the studio upstate, in progress, reaching for your hand...

Portait of Debbie, NYC, 2011

2011-07-30T08:41:00.002-04:00

Jailbait Wolff

2011-06-15T10:16:00.002-04:00

Scrap

2011-05-25T12:57:00.002-04:00

The Culvert

2011-05-19T19:54:00.002-04:00

Gato Loco Trio at St Celia's Chapel

2011-05-16T16:59:00.016-04:00

new recipe

2011-05-14T08:49:00.002-04:00

Rembrandt, with sides of Titian, Bellini and Vermeer (free night at the Frick)
cupcakes
bottle of Medoc
Hudson River esplanade, full-leafed & blooming
dollop of moonlight in the late light of luminant dusk

mix as you wish throughout day & evening

Imaginary Friend

2011-05-13T14:46:00.001-04:00

Herzog and the cave artists

2011-05-12T07:29:00.000-04:00

Yesterday I went to see Herzog's 3D movie: Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Its about the paintings in France's Chauvet cave; 30,000 year old art preserved by a rockfall that sealed the cave's opening for thousands of years. Its a labyrinth of glittering drip formations, skulls coated in smooth diamondesque, ancient footprints, and beautiful paintings. The art is sleek and exact yet loose and fluid. The animals drawn across the undulating walls move with the confidence of an artist's hand that loves and knows its business. There is nothing primitive about them. They have the same glamor as a perfect modern scribble or an Egyptian sculpture. They are wonderfully noisy and active, the movement of wild animal and the human hand coalesced into lines on secret walls.
So cool to see and then walk out onto 6th Avenue in a perfect Spring afternoon.

Boy in the Ferns

2011-05-08T10:09:00.002-04:00

Paragraph of Grass

2011-04-26T21:24:00.002-04:00

from dementia to rain

2011-04-23T12:58:00.003-04:00

Here in NYC the rain envelopes in a cold, frazzled sheet. Somewhere outside a bird insists on insisting. Consider the mind in the midst of dementia: wherein the simplest violent move on TV, even in the context of slapstick, convinces one that murder is eminent, probably one's own. And then think of being on the outside of that construct, but attempting to empathize within it. Probably why I'm so flat lined this week.
Of course there is a solution. Make another painting. Have a Francis Bacon kind of optimism based on nothing but the sheer nowness of things. Alive now=cheerful. From the man of mouths comes that bit of buoyant wisdom.
New Olympic sport: run, leap, image
ha

Portrait of Long Ji

2011-04-20T20:52:00.002-04:00

Portrait of the Creek in Andes

2011-03-21T14:30:00.001-04:00

Portrait of the Hudson River

2011-03-08T17:22:00.002-05:00

Portrait of the Li River

2011-03-03T12:25:00.002-05:00

Loka's story & wall

2011-02-27T10:09:00.007-05:00

Up on the wall is Loka--a painting wherein the character migrated from an old story I wrote and reappeared in a slightly different, but still alien environment, know as The Piano Lands. This painting didn't waltz out of the brain pan. It insisted on dancing its own recalcitrant beat, forcing me to learn and relearn its meandering grace. Meanwhile a friend gave me some old frames and I collaged up various drawings inside them. I like looking at things together, letting their lines twine and bump.

Gato Loco at Joe's Pub!

2011-02-18T18:35:00.014-05:00

Written on the Street

2011-02-04T11:44:00.005-05:00

In Chinatown this morning, walking the wandering streets---that are hieroglyphed with the multi-colored and gilt remainders of last night's New Year's celebration. Eddying at the edges of iced snow mounds and trodden into the amber-grey sidewalks the little rectangular papers talk a narrative of Spring Festival and hopes for a prosperous new year.
恭喜发才!

Another view

2011-01-30T19:39:00.002-05:00

I love the point of view, across the plain of the dinner's wreckage, through the various translucency's to the faces in the midst of conversation...

January Snow

2011-01-25T08:52:00.002-05:00

Inside, outside, movement marking the window's exterior, the interior so still in contrast, the light so blue/umber-dark, outside and in.

Virgil talks about history

2011-01-23T13:06:00.004-05:00

In Xiamen

2011-01-20T10:06:00.005-05:00

On this trip every city held within it a huge park that was a complete Chinese mythology unto itself. There were lakes, mountains, sculptures, temples and wandering paths. In Xiamen there was this incredible blue humming bird.....

View from Dragon Bridge

2011-01-19T15:03:00.003-05:00

Virgil and the Pinks

2011-01-19T15:01:00.003-05:00

Chinese shrimp, brush & ink style

2011-01-18T13:00:00.005-05:00

Bargained for and bought from the artist as he did a demo out in the freezing streets of Nanjing:

Feathers in January

2011-01-17T17:19:00.003-05:00

Looking out the window this afternoon I saw feathers drifting and blowing through the overcast day. They were coming from somewhere above. I surmise: somewhere a falcon has caught a pigeon and is preparing and enjoying its lunch.
Thus in NYC this early 2011.

The Li River and the mountains of Dr Seuss, China

2011-01-14T11:06:00.017-05:00

Longji, the dragonback terraced hills of Guilin

2011-01-14T02:47:00.019-05:00

China Sketchbook

2011-01-13T18:46:00.031-05:00

Xiamen

2011-01-13T11:56:00.011-05:00

Back in NYC in body, although the brain is still partially in transit---until full arrival here are pictures from Xiamen:

The fish we picked for lunch, before:

...and after:

Nanjing Massacre Museum

2010-12-24T02:37:00.006-05:00

Nanjing

2010-12-22T21:54:00.004-05:00

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

2010-12-18T14:31:00.000-05:00

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

Thanksgiving Roses

2010-12-03T08:38:00.002-05:00

Thanksgiving 2010

2010-11-30T09:13:00.017-05:00

Green Window

2010-11-23T11:44:00.000-05:00

mugshot

2010-11-07T15:48:00.002-05:00

Ganesh and the Autumn

2010-10-24T13:57:00.004-04:00

An Explanatory Note

2010-10-18T18:16:00.005-04:00

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

Pen & Ink

2010-10-18T10:10:00.003-04:00

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

2010-10-14T11:52:00.000-04:00

Angelucci

2010-09-23T16:49:00.002-04:00

Sally's Lights & Beans

2010-09-06T16:35:00.005-04:00

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

2010-09-06T12:02:00.001-04:00

A Day, Hot

2010-09-02T18:46:00.002-04:00

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

2010-08-30T17:44:00.004-04:00

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

2010-08-29T11:50:00.000-04:00

Red, Prime & Dusk

2010-08-24T19:02:00.004-04:00

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

2010-08-24T14:12:00.001-04:00

Pink Umbrella & such

2010-08-23T11:39:00.007-04:00

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

2010-08-21T19:57:00.002-04:00

New York, again

2010-08-20T06:27:00.002-04:00

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

2010-08-15T05:18:00.008-04:00

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.

More Italy

2010-08-14T05:20:00.013-04:00

Italy!

2010-08-13T06:17:00.007-04:00

Light Shapes

2010-08-01T10:14:00.002-04:00

Skitter, skatter laser shot of light through the window in the late afternoon--could be underwater, other world or just the brilliant maya of here and now....

Portrait of Donna

2010-07-27T16:17:00.001-04:00

Molten City

2010-07-21T21:58:00.002-04:00

At the Met today I reacquainted myself with Rembrandt's soft shadows, drifted past various ballgowns smeared with beads, rhinestones, sequins and delicate embroidery, found a delicious Picasso drawing and sat under a dense thicket of bamboo on the roof. Out in the street the heat rode the pavement like horny gangsters. Tonight I have three fans on and the aftertaste of Herzog's Bad Lieutenant.
What a life.

Train Clouds

2010-07-13T20:42:00.002-04:00

Outside the window is the cathedral of clouds, the wizz of wires, the sudden appearance of domestic, commercial, and urban angles invaded with green, puddles and the tide coming in or going out. Inside I watch a movie (The Hurt Locker) on the laptop. The meaning of movement, the meaning of stasis.
I think I'll go make another painting...

Portrait of L

2010-07-04T10:24:00.000-04:00

Dreamy Green

2010-06-20T22:57:00.002-04:00

Virgil & Djoal

2010-06-16T17:44:00.001-04:00

New Drawings

2010-06-09T08:39:00.011-04:00

V & Feather asleep--above & below

V asleep:

Feather:

Dennis:

Chip:

Portrait of Dennis

2010-06-07T14:55:00.002-04:00

Portrait of Chip (SRD)

2010-05-25T14:47:00.002-04:00

Chinglish joke for Virgil: paper painting

2010-05-22T08:16:00.001-04:00

Portrait of 3

2010-05-21T10:35:00.002-04:00

Sun & Wind: glittering

2010-05-10T07:47:00.006-04:00

Pouring through my pores, drenching the retinal skin with the nameless essences we try to name as colors....

Portrait of D

2010-05-02T11:15:00.000-04:00

Up Over

2010-04-29T06:44:00.002-04:00

Portrait of W

2010-04-26T08:38:00.002-04:00

Drawings

2010-04-26T07:23:00.003-04:00

My friend's Great Dane puppy...

My Dad reading...

Wolff in Brooklyn

2010-04-19T10:41:00.000-04:00

Spring Upstate

2010-04-19T07:54:00.003-04:00

The Rail Trail's path saunters out over the river and then abruptly halts and morphs back into its old trestle self and tip-toes across empty space, merging with rocks and green.

In the garden the daffodils dance and the hyacinths curl their curls, dense with perfume. Everywhere the new green aches to become sky.

Delany & Wolff

2010-04-12T10:41:00.001-04:00

Me and Chip Delany at the Kitchen

Portrait of M

2010-04-11T15:25:00.000-04:00

good weather

2010-04-07T05:43:00.002-04:00

The daze of spring: the blue bells blue and the lemony dance of the daffodils. Down the streets of NYC the trees bloom in a silent applause of kisses.
The body walks this way and then that trying to find the path that mimics the eyes delight. The sunlight pours everywhere in a generous deluge.
We wake up, ready or not, our reserve unreserved, our heart windows open, and the mind running away from us down the stairs and out the door...