Sidney Goodman

Crowd Scene, 1977-79

oil on canvas

66 3/4” H x 144 7/8” inches

Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, Richmond, VA

Today I am sharing a painter that is probably one of the earliest branches in my artistic lineage. It is fair to say that, while I am not always thinking about Sidney Goodman, there is a little bit of Goodman in every painting I make.

Sidney Goodman had a way of elevating the mundane. He painted the people and places of his surroundings in Philadelphia. While much of his work was based on his commonplace, the works feel surreal through his depiction of figures in seemingly uncommon scenarios or places. He would blend multiple events of his everyday life in one painting, sometimes using images referencing art history, giving the work a dreamlike feeling. As a professor at PAFA, he had access to their incredible cast hall and would often include images of those casts in his work. He also played heavily on the metaphor of natural elements as a part of his painted world. He would not shy away from depicting the worst of humanity as well as the best. Crowd Scene is a fairly straightforward image, providing the viewer with the seemingly mundane, a gathering of people to witness an event. The viewer is placed within the crowd making it less about the event and more about the crowd as the event. You, the viewer, a witness, an observer, is as much a part of the crowd as the depicted.

It was Crowd Scene that first introduced me to the work of Goodman. I pulled a catalog for a 1980/81 touring exhibition off the library stacks as a student at Kutztown University of Pennsylvania. I would often make my way to the campus library to randomly browse the stacks. The Goodman catalog featured mostly black and white reproductions with a sampling of color images. Crowd Scene was on the cover image of the catalog, which initially got my attention. It was immediately clear that he held drawing and painting as equals. I also connected to his use of the commonplace as setting for his allegorical work. As a student new to the full expanse of art history and the contemporary art scene, I had found someone making paintings and drawings from things that were also familiar to me. He linked the past and the present. Goodman showed me how a contemporary painter could continue the craft, expand it, and honor it all based in his own place and time. Inside the catalog was one after the other of images that instantly excited me. Drawings like Burning Vehicle, 1978, a charcoal with the addition of pastel on paper, rendered a turned over vehicle on fire. It blended both modern sensibilities with realism. It was messy but precise. Figures in Landscape, 1972 placed contemporary figures and everyday objects in an everyday scene. However, in classic Goodman form, he charges the scene by presenting a stormy sky and separating the figures’ positions and their postures making the image entirely uncomfortable.

I was uniquely positioned between Philadelphia and New York while attending KU. I remember on a day of gallery hopping in Midtown New York in 1995, I went into Terry Dintenfass Gallery to see an exhibition of works on paper by Goodman. A version of Night Vision was included in that exhibition. Night Vision is a perfect example of how Goodman’s work slides into the dreamlike by depicting his wife sleeping with the Laocoön figure and serpent on the opposing side of the drawing. It was after seeing this exhibition that I started making my own large charcoal drawings.

It was only a few months later that I would stumble upon an exhibition including his work at a newly opened exhibition space at Lebanon Valley College in the quiet town of Annville, PA1. The exhibition included a large Goodman painting as well as other Philadelphia painters, Bo Bartlett and Renee Foulks, among others. In 1996 I would have the chance to see the retrospect of his work at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. I think it is fair to say that much of my work between 1994 and 1999 was inspired by Goodman. I eventually moved on from Goodman, but I think a little of his bold draftsmanship and compositional choices remain in my work today, part of my artistic DNA.

Goodman is relatively well represented in Mid-Atlantic collections. His work can mostly be found in any of the Philadelphia museums, though often not on view. I am hoping to one day visit the VFMA to to be reacquainted with Crowd Scene.

Explore more of Goodman’s work on Artsy

Thanks for Pondering with me.

Warren Rohrer

Deluge, 1983

oil on canvas

66 3/8 x 66 3/8 inches

The Phillips Collection, Washington, DC

I would like to introduce you to the work of Warren Rohrer. Pennsylvania air often brings to mind his work. The air of late summer and autumn, in particular, often beckon his work. Today, as I think about his work, I invite you to ponder with me.

I first came across Rohrer’s work while in grad school. I was intrigued, but I wasn’t sure if I liked them. There was something familiar about them. I just couldn’t place it in the moment. Unexpectedly, I found myself thinking about the work over the next few days, even weeks. I would occasionally come across his work in a museum collection or exhibition and each time I would spend a little more time looking carefully at the work. Every time I was with his work it would stay with me a little longer. Then, on one visit with his work I learned he was from Lancaster County, living and working less than an hour away from where I work today.1 I suddenly understood what was familiar, he painted my air and land. His color was familiar.

I knew little about him, other than he was a Philadelphia based artist. I came to learn that Rohrer was a former Mennonite who worked on a farm in southern Lancaster County before moving to Philadelphia when he and his wife purchased the former home of another prominent Pennsylvania artist, Violet Oakley. He was inspired by Mark Rothko and Agnes Martin, which I think is clear. His abstractions are based on the farmland that he knew so well. What I think resonates with me most is his layers of color. He layers in ways that subtly change over the expanse of the canvas, just as a sky or field would. This layered change of color glows with a pulsating light. The light and color of his canvases are spot on for the color of Lancaster County farmland. Where I often see Rothko or Martin when I am looking at my landscape, I often see my landscape when I look at Rohrer’s paintings.

Rohrer’s work is best experienced in person (as is all great art). Most of his work is held in east coast US collections, both public and private. His estate is handled by Locks Gallery in Philadelphia, where he exhibited during his lifetime. They continue to exhibit his work but, otherwise, he is rarely on view. They produced this short video of Rohrer discussing his paintings. It is a beautiful introduction to his work.

Cecily Brown

Figures in a Landscape 2, 2002

oil on linen

80 x 90 inches

The Broad Art Foundation

Cecily Brown paints the history of art. I don’t remember when Cecily Brown first came on my radar. Her paintings are an instant visual draw for me, the layers of color and texture pull you in from across the room. Once she has your gaze she does not let you down. You start to see the layers, not just paint, but content. When I say content I don’t necessarily mean a message. She is a true extension of the canon of painting. Much like Duchamp and Picasso began utilizing everyday objects to create works of art, and Warhol’s use of popular culture, Brown pulls from the whole of art history, current and dated pop culture, mythology, and more. She attempts to connect the dots between it all through the act of painting which is the sole impetus for her work. The work often begins with a representational image but then begins to drift into the abstracted end point that you see when you view her paintings, not unlike that of art history itself. It is not an attempt to cover the representation but to react to the initial inspiration and to react with the whole of art history.

I got to see an exhibition of her work this past spring at the Barnes Foundation in Philadelphia. It was a small retrospect, and frankly, the perfect amount of work. I gravitate toward, of course, her landscape work. I am equally drawn to her shipwrecks and her recent venture into still life and memento mori. Since the exhibition her paintings have continued to pop into my head. While I could select any of the work in the exhibition or otherwise, today I am pondering, Figures in a Landscape 2 from 2002.

Starting with the imagery and sensual color of the 18th century rococo landscapes of Fragonard and Watteau, Brown begins to react to the imagery, pulling from her 21st century perspective. The layers begin as if she is sharing an internal dialogue visually with the viewer. Often these washes and drags of color appear incomprehensible, only to reveal over time as an ever evolving possibility of clarity. Brown used the sexually charged rococo imagery to begin the painting. The reactions pile up from there revealing hints of what came before. In Figures in a Landscape 2, she gives us a rollicking spill of flesh set in the out of doors, that becomes more about the act of painting than its original imagery. A head, an arm, or a leg is obscured by paint. It is very different from the way I create, an entirely different starting point, yet I am drawn to her paintings as if there is a strong kinship between our paintings and the act of painting.

I love to look deep into her paintings, through the layers, finding her references, Thinking I found her references, and then watching them unfold, get rearranged, reinvented on the canvas. It was one of the joys of finally seeing a body of her work. Her art historical references are vast as well as her pop culture references, all puzzled together through the act of reacting with paint. Smeared, piled, obscured, re-drawn. Her paintings are a visual record of her thinking. You don’t have to know what art she is referencing, in fact, it is part of the wonder of discovery when you do recognize her reference. She is digging deep into art history and culture. It makes me dig a little deeper.

Thanks for pondering with me.

If you enjoyed this Pondering you may also enjoy these:

Vincent van Gogh

Rain, 1889

oil on canvas

28 7/8 x 36 3/8 inches

Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA

I have been thinking about van Gogh lately.

In particular, I have been thinking about his painting Rain. I am not sure why it popped into my head, but it could very well have been the extreme storms that seem to be a regular occurrence here in Pennsylvania this summer. The kind of extreme rain where the size and multitude of raindrops physically diminish one’s field of vision.

While I have always enjoyed van Gogh, of late I am gaining a new understanding of his work. This is actually an important part of Pondering and why I decided to launch this supplement to Damned Hard Work. Throughout life our perspectives change. Life has a way of making you see things clearly that you never saw before, and with it a new understanding.

With van Gogh, I now see how he was entirely driven to make the work he believed in and was revolutionizing not only how a painting was made but how one saw painting, just through the act of painting. He looked at the painters around him as well as who came before him. The new theories of color and painting being experimented with were all around him. He saw positive aspects in most, but also ones that didn’t apply to his vision. His doubt toward Impressionism manifests in a something newthat exemplifies the perceptive nature of painting. It is not to reproduce nature but to reproduce an experience with nature. It is individual, yet universal. It is not that I didn’t see this before in his work, but something about the way I see my own world through paint has made van Gogh’s version all the more clear.

It was incredible how many paintings van Gogh completed in the last two years of his life. Not just by number, but by excellence. It was a truly stunning feat of painting. Rain is one of a handful of paintings van Gogh produced late in his life of storms and rain. Symbolic, maybe, or just a visual coincidence of the place he was painting? There is that subconscious draw to elements of the landscape and weather that tends to metaphorically mirror ones situation in life. What is clear, just from the number of paintings from this time period, he didn’t think, he just painted. Rain was a complete reaction to what he was witnessing from his window at the asylum in Arles. Again, not a realist depiction of nature, but in a sense it feels more real because we are witness to his experience with this rain. It has all of the feeling of a rainy day. You imagine rainy days as gray and drab, but in reality they are often full of color. You see that here in Rain. A brightening sky, a narrow value range, but full of color. We are transported to that moment, his moment becomes ours.

Rain, its visual simplicity and the angled lines of color resembling raindrops, have always stopped me in my tracks. Of all the other works in the room, this little painting of rain draws me in every time, connects me with van Gogh, to a place I have never been, across an ocean,136 years later.

That is the power of painting.

I will continue to ponder van Gogh. Thanks for pondering with me.

George Bellows (1882-1925)

Blue Morning, 1909

oil on canvas

33 x 44 inches

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

A few months back I had a conversation with Christopher Benson who writes . George Bellows was the center point of that conversation, which led me down a rabbit hole, a familiar one, but one I hadn’t been down for awhile. For me, Bellows is a one degree separation from Edward Hopper. My investigation into Hopper’s work early in my college days had led me to the Ashcan School and the students of Robert Henri. I immediately loved the work of John Sloan, Everett Shinn, and especially Bellows (even though he was never truly considered one of the Eight). His New York paintings were raw, bright and simultaneously dark. Gritty may be a better way of describing it, but a beautiful gritty. Bellows had unique palette which is distinctly his.

In Blue Morning, Bellows depicts the construction of Penn Station in New York City, often referred to as the biggest hole ever dug on the island of Manhattan. I love that, we the viewer, stand in a dark shadow looking out into the Manhattan skyline draped in bright winter light. It is not unlike Claude or Hudson River School paintings with a similar light enhanced by a foreground draped in shadow. But Bellows’ painting lacks the refinement of a Claude or Hudson River School painting, his is raw and unrefined. His is reactionary. Brushstrokes are visible throughout, left as they were placed. Those brush strokes become what they are meant to represent. The squiggled line at the top representing the girders of the El. The strokes the form edges of buildings or the marks that form the foundation of Penn Station. These are reactionary moments, not thought over. They are hastily applied rather than carefully. That seemingly careless pushes and pulls of paint makes the painting feel alive. Though it uses a similar color concept, it was not impressionism and it certainly wasn’t the sublime depictions of nature by the Hudson River School. This was a new approach to landscape, one that looked at its reality, but also one that relied on the nature of paint, color, and mark to tell the story.

I had a chance to see Blue Morning, along side the equally fantastic Lone Tenement , at NGAmoments before the 2020 Pandemic. Then, like now, I am reminded how beautiful that raw mark can be and how not everything needs to be refined. Let marks stand for what they are; your hand in the moment. There is nothing more beautiful than that. Certainly it is something to ponder. Thanks for pondering with me and thanks, Christopher, for bringing his work back to my mind!

If you would like to read a little more about Blue Morning and George Bellows, check out this link.

Catherine Murphy

Begin Again, 2019

oil on canvas

46.5 x 48 inches

Peter Freeman in New York recently had an exhibition of new work by Catherine Murphy. I love Murphy’s work. What she paints is so common it often looks odd. She has an uncanny way of taking the simplest things from life and composing them into complex feats of painting. She is like no other painter or should I say no other painter is like her. Her work touches on what it means to be human and the relationships of being human without ever feeling cliché. She paints directly from life and her life drives her work.

I was first introduced to Catherine Murphy’s work as an undergraduate student in a book of Photorealism. Her painting, Elena, Harry and Alan in the Backyard, 1978 was reproduced in black and white. I could easily select handfuls worth of Murphy’s work to ponder, but today I have chosen Begin Again. It is an older work from her last show at Peter Freeman, but it is one of my favorites (today) because it encapsulates what I love about her work and how she makes me think about the act of making a painting and its potential as a result of observing.

Begin Again is a consummate Murphy. Her attention to detail is second to none. The repeatedly traced hand on an aged decorated wall is as playful as a child might trace their hand, yet these repeated tracings have a searching feel. They are both playful and serious all at once. I can’t help but think of the handprints on the cave walls of Lascaux when I look at this painting. A traced hand on a wall is proof of existence. By simply placing our hand with in theirs, we confirm that there was once another us standing in that very position. It is time and presence all at once. The act of painting an image of something painted or painting the act of painting also reminds me of Vermeer's The Art of Painting. In Vermeer’s case he is letting us watch him paint history, but Murphy, with the extension of her forearm, is placing us directly in the act of tracing our hand on the wall, trying to get it right.

Thanks for taking a moment to ponder with me…

John Moore

Shipyard, 2024

charcoal on paper

46 x 45 inches

When I first came across John Moore’s recent drawings at Locks Gallery in Philadelphia I was instantly excited. I was familiar of Moore’s paintings and his drawings, but I don’t think I had ever seen a group of drawings, alone, without his paintings. In 2025 John Moore will be 84 years old. He has been exhibiting his work for 56 years. Not that numbers are important; but he is making some of his best work in his 80s.

What took me aback when I first saw this exhibition of drawings was that they are quintessential Moore. Why would they be otherwise? It is impressive. They have a little Sheeler, a little Seurat at times, but they are classic Moore. His recent drawings are solidly consistent and continue to expand his already long history of painting and drawing a blended industrial and natural world, often displaying a sense of equal decay in both. Regardless if you are situated outside or inside, usually looking out, his work is filled with light. Despite this you will not find any overt shadows coming off of the objects he is depicting. Sure, there are shadows cast from lit objects, but not in the sense of say, a Hopper painting. His work is a carefully constructed arrangement of shapes and color (or tones in the case of his drawings) opening up into a light filled cluttering of the brick and mortar landscape.

While you ponder his drawing, perhaps it would be helpful to consider one of Moore’s paintings. I love that piece of paper floating through the middle of the painting/space.

When you ponder Moore’s artwork what do you think? Let’s discuss.

Leave a comment

Thanks for taking a moment to Ponder with me.

Andrew Wyeth

Dryad, 2000/2007

tempera on panel

47.75 x 44.25 inches

Brandywine Museum of Art, Chadds Ford, PA

The Washington Post just published an article titled, “Are We Ready to Admit that Andrew Wyeth was Great?” And so I ask, what took you so long?

I admit I was once a skeptic too, but that was taught to me. When I was still an undergrad in the mid 90s I visited the Brandywine Museum of Art several times with my watercolor class. We were taught cautioned that it was unpopular to like Wyeth’s work, yet there we were. The Brandywine was literally in Wyeth’s backyard. It houses his collection of his father’s work and ephemera as well as his own work. He would occasionally pop in for a visit. On one of my visits he did just that. However, I was too busy in a another gallery studying a late Hopper plein air to know he was in the next gallery. I missed my opportunity to be in his presence. I have been told by those who knew him that Andy would have preferred and admired me looking at that Hopper rather than gushing over him. Anyway, it took me about a decade to get over the skepticism, so I get why it is hard to admit that he was great.

I continued to visit once I left school. My wife and I visited regularly in the late 90s (I, secretly hoping it would be a day Andy would visit). In the 00s we lolled only to return to share it with our son in the 10s. It was during one of those visits that it clicked for me. He didn’t make pretty pictures (of course he did), meaning, it wasn’t his intention. Those works were a result of a life spent painting and drawing his surroundings, his own his history, as he stated. The work that led to those incredibly detailed temperas was extensive, but not to obtain the required information for the painting. The detail was a result of seeing abstractly. The temperas rose out of ideas gained from working, looking, watching…living.

I enjoy his temperas, but his watercolors often floor me. The Brandywine holds most of Wyeth’s studies, but they aren’t studies at all, they are simply his work. They seem like they would be studies because of their loose and free application which is visually opposite to the temperas. In recent years the museum has been producing exhibitions based around his “studies”. For most of these “studies”, it is the first time they have ever been exhibited. He was prolific, not because it was his job, but because it was how he existed. His work was an extension of his being, it was his nature. Once you recognize this you start to understand his greatness. Yes, he was a realist who often painted seemingly sentimental subjects, which is wildly unpopular among the artworld masses. If you look close you will find those sentiments are only surface, just an entry point into a darker reality. His work often deals with death, dying, and the passage of time, but that was also a subconscious element that was derived from his mere existence, a reaction to his own life, not as a result of intention. He found his realism through abstraction, in flashes of reality remembered. That is evident when you see the “studies”. His reactions to what he saw was as fluid as thinking.

When I first saw Dryad, it took my breath away. I think because it felt more like his watercolors than his earlier temperas. It currently stands as one of my favorite Wyeth works. It originally had a nude female in the hollow of the tree trunk. In 2007, two years before his passing, he painted her out leaving the focus on the dark cavern of the weather beaten aged trunk. So, in reality he was quite aware of the contradicting sentiment and brute reality in his work and wove it carefully into the work. You can still see some of the halo of her youthful presence in the hollow of the trunk. It is wildly abstract in its design and incredibly detailed in one breath. That aged beaten tree still stands tall, close to us on a marsh, seemingly on its own, distant from the rest. Only a few surrounding trees cast shadows on it.

Yes, Wyeth was a great artist.

Want to see Wyeth for yourself? You have some opportunities if you are on the east coast of the US.

A selection of his work is always on display at the Brandywine Museum of Art, just outside of Philadelphia, as well as the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, ME. Currently, Andrew Wyeth at Kuerner Farm: The Eye of the Earth is on exhibition at Reynolda House Museum of Art in Winston-Salem, North Carolina through May 25, 2025. The exhibition travels to the Brandywine in June 2025.

Fidelia Bridges

Milkweeds, 1876

watercolor on paper

16 x 9.5 inches

Munson Williams Procter Institute, Utica, NY

I created Pondering to share the images that I come across in my day-to-day. Some I know, some are new to me. Sometimes it is something I see that reminds me of a work of art. Sometimes it is something in my own work that makes me recall an artist. In other cases, it may be seeing an artist’s exhibit and then a game of six degrees from that artist. Either way, I see and think about art and the history of art a lot. The work that sticks in my head, the work I continue to ponder long after seeing it, the work that makes me think or reconsider my opinion are the works you will see featured here on Pondering.

Today I am pondering a work by Fidelia Bridges. My fellow Somerville Manning Gallery artist, Holly Trostle Brigham, is currently working on a new project featuring the work of Fidelia Bridges and Jemima Blackburn. Excited to see her working with Bridges’ work, I was instantly transported in my mind to Milkweeds. When I was a young artist, probably still in school, I acquired a large tome called American Art. Bridges is included in that book, oddly in a 19th century still life section. This was my introduction to her and her work. I would page through the book regularly, enjoying the large reproductions of all my favorite artists. I would pass by the well known artists, pausing to commune with my favorite paintings, but when I came to the page with Milkweeds, I would linger a little longer. To this day, whenever Bridges’ work comes up, this is the image I instantly go to in my mind.

The watercolor is set as if you are sitting among and looking up through the plants and grasses. The butterflies cling to and flutter about the milkweed. The low focal point gives the image a life size feeling despite the watercolor’s small size. If you have ever been witness to such activity in a meadow, you would find Bridges’ depiction of this nature is perfect, but not necessarily in an illustrative way. While each plant is depicted with an exactitude and clarity, the painting feels more alive than just a well rendered illustration of the same plantlife. In fact, the clarity of each plant depicted is that of a true student of nature, like her teacher, William Trost Richards who remarked that in Bridges’ work "one hears the voice of nature speaking in the idiom of art.".1 For me, her small painting sets up an emotional response, a gasp of beauty.

She was highly regarded in her time and painted until the day she died at age 88. Despite her work being held in a multitude of great collections, the Met, the National Gallery of Art, the Smithsonian, etc, she is often overlooked. My hope is that someone, someday, will eventually put together an exhibition of her beautiful well-deserving work.

I often think of this painting when I am in a meadow or fieldside with (or without, but especially with) milkweed. In the moment I linger between the meadow before me and Bridges’ painting in my mind.

Thanks for Pondering with me.

André Derain

Charing Cross Bridge, London, 1906

oil on canvas

31 5/8 x 39 1/2 inches

National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

I was recently reminded of Derain’s London work by an exhibition of Monet’s London work at the Courtauld in London.

Inspired by Monet’s nearly 100 paintings made on 3 trips to London between 1899 and 1901, art dealer Ambrose Voillard, suggested that the young painter André Derain do the same. With the urging of his friends Henri Matisse and Camille Pisarro, Derain traveled to London 3 times in 1906 and early 1907. However, he found the task difficult, only managing 30 paintings over his 3 trips, 20 shy of the 50 slated by his dealer. Derain’s direction would change drastically shortly after he exhibited the 30 works in 1907, partially because of the art he saw while in London.1

Whenever I see Monet’s paintings of London, I am often reminded about Derain’s London works. There is a certain dialogue in my mind about the difference between color space and color atmosphere when I consider the two artists differing London works. It was Derain’s question too. He found Monet’s impression as fugitive and non-lasting. He wanted something more fixed, more solid.2

Incidentally, Derain’s Charing Cross Bridge, London was my first master copy, completed as a paper collage in high school. I totally didn’t understand it, but was fascinated by the color concepts and mark making. Now I marvel at his color and his accomplishment of creating a space where each object sits solidly in its place within the whole of the picture plane.

Thanks for taking a moment to Ponder with me.

Caspar David Friedrich

View of Arkona with Rising Moon, 1805-06

Brown ink and wash over pencil

24 x 39.25 inches

The Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria

Welcome to the first installment of Pondering, a supplement of Damned Hard Work, where I share work by artists that make me think, remember, reconsider…ponder.

The work of Caspar David Friedrich is experiencing a great resurgence of interest. Last year was the 250th anniversary of his birth and Germany hosted a myriad of exhibitions to honor him. Caspar David Friedrich: The Soul of Nature has now come to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. A combination of the 2024 European exhibitions, this is the first Atlantic-side exhibition of his work in decades. I was anticipating these exhibitions because it meant I would get new opportunities to see his work and of course, the books that come along with them. The Met exhibition continues through May 11, 2025, but I am sure I will still be thinking of his work long after that.

The light and air he achieves in washes of this brown ink is astonishing. His compositions are relatively simple, hinting toward modernist color field compositions of the early 20th century. Clearly he was ahead of his time while being very much a part of his time. He was a student of nature and throughout his life he filled journals and sketchbooks with drawings of plants, rock, ruins, etc. in pencil, wash and/or watercolor. The work he did out in nature came into the studio with him in those journals, and in spirit. In both his finished drawings and oil paintings, Friedrich achieves a clarity in not just how nature looks, but how it feels. He was not afraid to push political buttons too. He didn’t just paint and draw his observations, he used those observations to create metaphor and embed subtle arrangements of symbol into each work. At first glance, Friedrich’s Arkona composition is all nature and reverence for the power of nature, but notice the ship tucked into the coastline and the rowboat nestled into (concealed by) the rocks. A subtle touch by Friedrich to tell us that this nature is inhabited. Again, ahead of his time, he looked at his landscape and transformed it into a powerful metaphor for his political and religious stance, two things that were in upheaval during his time.

I look at a lot of art, both historic and contemporary. I am equal artist and art historian. The two are inseparable aspects of my nature. The history of art has always been important to my work, my acknowledgment of the work, good or bad, informs every mark I make. It is not a conscience thing. It all just flows through onto the canvas, sometimes surprising me. The past is always with me and comes to the present in every brush stroke.

Pondering, a supplement to Damned Hard Work, will focus on the artwork that I come across that makes me think, sets my bar higher, reminds me, etc. These are the works I come across and then ponder. They take up residency in my mind for short periods of time, sometimes extended periods of time. I share these works not because they directly inform my own work, but for my love art and to acknowledge the creations made by other artists, past and present.

Ponder these works with me…