Joshua LaRock at GCA

Joshua LaRock an instructor at GCA has done a painting *after* Bouguereau's Jeune Femme Allant a la Fontaine. I am baffled by this on many levels; It is a copy but not a copy. It seems he has copied it but with his very own model - I am curious: did he recreate the dress ? Where did he get the same water jug ? The painting seems to be a great effort 62X48" . I really enjoyed comparing his with the master's. Joshua did a good job painting the head and the hands and the feet and so on and on ... how ever the charm of the original is sadly missing. The lovely graceful young girl is no where to be found in the plodding effort. I imagine Joshua thinking he has equaled or improved on the master but I am thinking - so what - does he not have anything of his own to say - is he stuck in a studio looking at reproductions and lacking a focus or use for his talent ? Yes he can paint but why?

Stuart Shils

Stuart Shils is showing at Tibor de Nagy November 20; an open air landscape painter, He works on a small scale finishing in one session. His work exudes a beautiful mood almost of lost memory - like a poem fragment or a translation - only the most important things emerge. His quiet paintings are restful to the eye and spirit.

Dora Carrington 1893 - 1932

An Artist who covered many surfaces besides canvas with paint - signs - walls - fireplaces - glass - ceramics - cabinets - did woodcuts - etc. etc. she never signed her work and painted mostly for her own pleasure. She was a force of nature - the model for many characters in the novels of DH Lawrence, Aldous Huxley, Wyndham-Lewis.....

She lived with Lytton Strachey for seventeen years and ended her life shortly after he died.

Emily Nelligan

Emily Nelligan an artist who has been working in Charcoal In a very small 8X10" format for the past 50 years is having a show at the Alexandre Gallery In the Fuller building about 57th Street in NY is described by Stuart Shils as a prophetess.

Seeing these reminds me why I am an artist - OH that is why.

Elizabeth Peyton

Elizabeth Peyton is beautiful. She is having a show at the New Museum of Contemporary Art of her portraits. The works are small images taken from photographs of famous and not so famous people - They appear to be done on birch panels that have been sanded smooth - there is a obsessiveness about them: sort of the feeling of falling in love as a child with a magazine image of a celebrity. They are beautiful and nice just like she is.

You paint your personality

Its inescapable - What one is attracted to - you cant hide it in a painting - especially a realist work - That is why so many realist paintings quiver on the edge of mediocrity. Why insecure collectors fear being judged for sentimentality - Reveal your self if you dare - it takes a genius to recognize a genius.

Nelson Shanks

Portrait painting has always been a risky business - personal vanity - family - friends - a few extra pounds? Everyone is a critic and one always has an opinion on what they know. A portrait painted from life is a conversation between the artist and model - both influencing each other's mood; and given the time it takes to complete it there is a real possibility for a representation of the models inner life.

Nelson Shanks has painted some of the most popular people of this time. I am wondering what is it like to be in his presence, what he talks to his models about , what he wears, what he does on the breaks. Is he funny, does he gossip ? Is he so charming that people like the portrait as much for the experience as a beautiful painting.

I wonder why he paints the people looking away - I always want the person to look directly at me.