Category: Abstract Painting

Karin Davie

still makes luscious paintings (thanks Amanda at Two Coats). I’ve previously blogged about her work and made a Pinterest “gallery” (below is from the #armoryshow in 2020).

I remember that she was having her first good art world moment when I was in undergrad. It’s often weird what sticks in your head but I still remember a cover of Art in America with one of her paintings.

More (Brooklyn Rail 2006)

#karindavie

Robert Ryman

I’m sure you’ve read about the Cloud Dancer controversy (maybe you’ve seen it framed as a dog whistle to our current, white nationalist administration). As usual I’ll note that two things can both be true- Pantone can be not-ill intentioned and tone deaf. All I see is editors and marketing folks (on all sides) who want clicks and likes but maybe that’s just me. And…

White and white-adjacent hues in the context of Art make me think of Robert. I initially blogged about him with the news that Ryman had passed, and took a little time to reflect on my reactions to his work over the years. This interview from 2007 is helpful. I also made a Pinterest gallery of some of his work.

Here’s an early work from right around the time he really found his voice (’62). Thanks for helping me learn to see Mr Ryman!

#robertryman

Georg Karl Pfahler

Karl at Whitehot has words about Georg’s chromatic logic (in the context of a recent, posthumous exhibit of the German artist’s work at Nino Mier Gallery.) Rising through the hard-edge movement after World War II, his work pivoted between Bauhaus experimentalism and New York’s emergent formalist abstraction.

More (estate IG)

#georgkarlpfahler

Stephanie Deady

Jonathan Stevenson discusses Stephanie’s “coolly seductive” paintings on display at Kevin Kavanagh Gallery in Dublin. Below is one of many titled “Emotional Calculus” like the show itself. He notes that, in “due course, the paintings reveal deeper intent, which is to complicate and enrich your ultimate apprehension of the presumptively simple life.”

More

#stephaniedeady

Allie McGhee

I wasn’t familiar with Allie until I saw below in an ArtNews article about updates to the Detroit Institute of Art’s collection*.

Allie McGhee has been a leading figure in the Detroit art scene since the 1960s. Initially a figurative painter, McGhee moved away from representation and toward the more universal abstract language he is best known for today. His mixed-media paintings, including sculptural works in which he folds, bends, and crumples the canvas, are notable for their signature arcing forms and brilliant washes of color.

*The DIA was among the first museums anywhere to build and exhibit a collection of African American art, which it began in 1943. In 2001 it became the first US museum to name a curator devoted to that field in Valerie J. Mercer, who still serves as the museum’s curator and head of African American art.  
#alliemcghee

Thanksgiving  

I hope wherever you are this finds you well.

I hope I’m not alone in committing to make the best of this occasion that we set aside in American culture as a holiday. Maybe you’re reading this because you need a break from family stuff, or reading this on Friday or even Saturday because you’ve been wrapped in the warm embrace of family and friends. I’m also thankful that we our expectations of what we have a right to expect is shifting, and the resistance to the same, I think, points out that it is hard work worth doing. However you are arriving, thanks for doing so. I wish that this is a holiday from worry for you.

As I often do here on this blog, I’ll echo what others in our community are doing- Hyperallergic* put out a Thanksgiving list today in the same spirit (making the best of it) which you should check out. I’m so thankful for that day in my parents attic when I made my first abstract painting, because it also opened up the Art World to me, which is so much bigger than that one modality. Speaking of Hyperallergic, I’m grateful that I have the gift of not being in one of the cities they cover so rigorously, and for the perspective that gives me. And to circle back to the top, I’m really grateful for publications like Hyperallergic (who shouts out Burnaway) and of course Two Coats of Paint. If you wanted to leave me a comment about your favorites, I would thankful for that, too!

Just the other day I decided to make little bit of change in the way I approach this blog, when I made a post about Meg which was not the first time I wrote about her work (btw I did pull the first post so don’t worry about a proliferation of duplicates). As I said in that post, I think revisiting a creative is well within the spirit of paying homage where due. It is in that context that I’ve decided to write this essay- because I want to (also) revisit this post, each year on the holiday. New traditions!

So it turns out… I’ve written before about being thankful. On Thanksgiving no less! I love it when the universe gives you little subtle hints that you’re on a good path. Something happened in my studio recently that was also a strong hint that an intuition I’ve had could be fruitful, maybe even pivotal. So I’m leaning in to that energy. And, you guys will just have to wait to hear about that topic because I’m still processing. It’s also pretty fun for me to read a blog from 5 years ago, which was a time when I was almost exclusively writing about the object-making part of my practice, and see some themes come back around again (I’ve gone back to “edge” as a concern in my work a couple of times since that post, including in some recent studies). I’m thankful to be in a place where I have the capacity to be present for these realizations.

And btw, yes we *absolutely* should all remember and tell the truth on days like today. Honesty shouldn’t take a holiday. We can be grateful that we live in a time when we can create and add to truth, and lift up the resilience it takes to be honest about our history in the interest of never repeating it. I’m being vague because if you’re here reading an Art blog I don’t need to unpack colonialist histories for you or link to the hundreds of essays on the internet about the reality of the relationships between early settlers in the US and the aboriginal peoples who were already here. Feel free to take a moment to sit with that and then release it with the kind of resolve that leads to good outcomes and better, fairer futures. Give yourself the grace to go back to being present wherever you are with people who matter to you.

I’m so, so thankful for you, whoever you are, that read this whole essay. I look forward to revisiting this article next Thanksgiving.

(*) Speaking of Hyperallergic, I saw this article earlier in the week and thought “I’m thankful for John Yau and all 4 of these creatives” (about whom I’ve blogged, which I’m also grateful to have the chance to do, for the love). John was writing about an exhibition which traces the radical advancements in painting by Al Held (one of my first blogs), Elizabeth Murray, Frank Stella and Judy Pfaff (who I hadn’t realized until recently was not featured here). 

Meg Lipke

Lawre Stone shouts out Meg’s newest noting they make enormity relatable.

This blog also represents a change for me. I posted about Meg once already in 2019 noting at the time the work was “one of the most interesting takes on the question of what is painting I’ve seen recently”- this is her IG post to which I linked. Prior to, well, today, I’ve typically avoided writing about an artist more than once, as a big part of this practice for me has been discovering new work or researching the canon. And, I have realized that keeping this catalog fresh is a legitimate way to pay respect to creatives that are working to stay relevant, so this will probably not be the last time I revisit a painter or other creative.

#meglipke