Wandering Artist's Journal

Two-oh-oh-seven. My god, what a year it's been. It could possibly be the most stressful year of my life, although there have been a few close competitors for that title. There's good stress and bad stress and this year started out with good stress. I was getting ready for a solo show, the "Red Sparrow" at the Newmark Gallery . It's the first time, and I hope the last time, that I didn't have all the paintings finished before the show was in the publicity cycle. Solo shows are stressful anyway, but that just adds a ridiculous mountain of anxiety on top of everything else. But I was dealing with it - just kept telling myself that as soon as the opening was over, I could relax. At noon, on the day of the opening, I got a phone call from the sheriff of Saratoga County, in upstate New York, telling me that my father was in jail. He had been arrested for disturbing the peace and threatening employees at the local hospital when they blocked his attempts to take h...

You may, or may not, have read my recent blog entry for BAArtQuake , where I talked about my first foray into Second Life . Originally, I thought I'd check out the art there, write about it, and never go back. Hah! That was not only naive, but disrespectful. The art scene in Second Life is fully developed, and way too expansive to be sampled or summed up in one little essay. At first, I was looking for paintings and prints, since that's where my preferences lie. We usually see what we know and I found plenty of galleries and museums showing digitized versions of Real Life paintings, drawings and prints. That's what I wrote about last week. But I didn't leave Second Life - it was too interesting, and there were too many things to see. For instance, I just got back from SLang Island , where a gallery is showing work by Gottfried Helnwein . It's a small show, but well done. The images are large, and well-lit and there's a mix of old & new work. His 2003 ...

OMG - this is a masterpiece - it's . . . ART!