mitchell johnson

Henri Rousseau

2012-02-11T10:18:00.000-08:00

"Surprise!, " 1891 Courtesy London National Gallery

I saw this amazing Rousseau painting at the National Gallery in London in 2009. I was standing before it just an hour after talking to Leland Bell's former dealer, Bob Stoppenbach, and I could hear Leland in my ear talking about how everyone from Picasso to Matisse worshipped Rousseau for his musicality and invention. There are Van Goghs and Cezannes in the French galleries and the crowds barely stopped in front of this masterpiece which in my opinion stole the show. Its sad how the didactic panel of this painting says Rousseau's style was "strange and naive" while the composition clearly contains wind and a very sophisticated and knowing use of color. Rousseau is essentially over most people's heads. I could clearly hear Leland raving about the graphic, inspired and self-assured quality of this composition as well as the soft, felt color modulations. The crazy red leaves on the right and the dots of fruit on the right are both effective and mysterious. The tiger's tail and teeth provide moments of black and white and combined with the gray of the sky and the lightning, they establish the overall light in the painting. The tiger's stripes echo the tall grasses while the large plant in the lower right is a foil for the red leaves above. The tiger's tail playfully becomes a snake revealing Rousseau's humanity. The leaves and foliage are distinct, perhaps even accurate, but first they are formal elements - never decorative. The fruit on the right echoes the tiger's singular eye. Please show me a more plastic, challenging and conceptual painting.

de Kooning Retrospective at MOMA

2012-01-03T07:51:00.000-08:00

Pink Landscape, 1942

The De Kooning retrospective at MOMA which closes next week (January 9, 2012) is so vast and so interesting that when I saw the exhibit yesterday with a sea-of-humanity, I still found myself completely immersed in this powerful body of work. Many quotes from Thomas Hess and De Kooning himself were included in the show and I think these have supplied the public with necessary handles for making sense of the remarkable and long course De Kooning traveled. Many of the conversations I heard behind me as I wrote down dates and titles of paintings involved the name Gorky. There is a famous De Kooning quote I first heard from my teacher, Paul Resika, about Gorky yelling to De Kooning as they crossed a busy street weaving in and out of traffic "don't follow too close, you may get hit." For all of the painters who will see this show, that quote should have been posted as both a warning and a challenge. De Kooning did follow closely. He followed Gorky, "Organization, 1935" and Matisse, "Piano Lesson, 1916" and Picasso, "Les Demoiselles D'Avignon, 1907" and yet somehow he remained himself through it all, using paint and color to produce a very complex autobiography.

What did I learn about De Kooning that will always stay with me? That many of his muscular thick "abstract" paintings like "Untitled XI (1975)" and the masterpiece "Two Figures in a Landscape (1967)," began with specifics: drawings and sketches based on figures, interiors and earlier work. De Kooning's characteristic impulsive and spontaneous feel is also grounded and convincing while much of Abstract Expressionism is not aging well. How can paintings like "Easter Morning (1955-56)" and "Gotham News (1955)" be so active, so dense and yet resolved? There is a bravado and a macho quality that appears (especially in reproduction) as the essential flavor of De Kooning's voice and style. But underneath this macho exterior is a better story, a slicing and dicing of the human experience that isn't just male, or New York School, or immigrant boy achieves fame. It's an investigation of how we can be such complex creatures, emotionally, visually and perceptively, yet also capable of getting ourselves out of bed, dressed and to work on time.

Woman VI, 1953

If you see the show, don't miss the flat planes of color in the lower right of "Woman VI (1953)" that separate it from the rest of the Woman series and connect this painting to both the 1929 "Still Life" that begins this retrospective while also anticipating the blockier feeling of "Easter Morning". There's something shallow or simple about the notion that "Gotham News (1955)" and its contemporaries are "city" paintings full of the randomness of patterns on the sidewalk while "Merrit Parkway (1959)" and its companions are about the space beyond De Kooning's Chelsea. But in the end, I found a real truth here to this interpretation because you could feel De Kooning escaping the pressures and expectations of the art world he chose to join in the broadness of the late 50's, Franz Kline-ish canvases known collectively as the "abstract parkway landscapes".

De Kooning took a break from painting and became heavily involved in sculpture before returning to his large Joan Mitchell like abstractions of the mid-1970s. The fuzzy scraped areas in the lower half of "Whose Name was Writ in Water (1975)" feel like a tie-died shirt below the thick impasto of yet another take on brushwork. I find De Kooning picking up the thread of "Woman VI" and "Easter Morning" as he retools a solution for escaping the trap of the slashing (and violence) that hold the Woman canvases together. Maybe the most interesting and valuable lesson of this show is that you can watch De Kooning abandon touches and approaches when they become too easy, and tirelessly trek into new frontiers of thinking about and applying paint and examining still more aspects of the human condition.

Balaton Two, 2011

2011-12-10T16:47:00.001-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 38x54 inches, Private Collection Los Angeles, CA [MJ66-11]

Hinge, 2011

2011-09-14T09:44:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 40x60 inches, Private Collection Palo Alto, CA [MJ61-10]

Tjorn (Two Boats), 2008- 2010

2011-09-14T09:06:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 18x18 inches, Private Collection Hillsborough, CA [MJ26-08]

Montisi (Chiara), 2010

2011-09-14T09:03:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 16x16 inches, Private Collection Patterson, NY [MJ54-10]

Fillipi #2, 2010

2011-09-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 16x25 inches, Private Collection Redwood City, CA [MJ67-10]

South Aegean, 2009-2011

2011-09-14T08:48:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 16x20 inches, Private Collection Menlo Park, CA [MJ06-11]

Sasso Marconi (Stripes), 2009-2010

2011-09-14T07:12:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 14x16 inches, Private Collection Patterson, NY [MJ24-10]

Mitchell Johnson paintings in Crazy, Stupid, Love (2011)

2011-09-05T11:19:00.001-07:00

My painting, "Truro (bands)," 2009 which belongs to the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, appears with four other Mj paintings in Dan Fogelman's latest film, Crazy, Stupid, Love.

Alta Plaza (Couple), 2008-2009

2011-09-05T11:12:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 22x28 inches, Private Collection Sonoma, CA [MJ66-09]

Maya, 2010-2011

2011-09-05T11:09:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 38x42 inches, Private Collection Sonoma, CA [MJ13-11]

Near Clecy, 2008-2010

2011-08-31T11:24:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 12x38 inches, Private Collection Palo Alto, CA [MJ20-10]

Bosphorus (Ghino Again), 2010

2011-08-31T11:19:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 38x58 inches, Private Collection San Francisco, CA [MJ32-10]

Near Torrenieri (Colza), 2009

2011-08-31T10:20:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 18x28 inches, Private Collection Portola Valley, CA [MJ25-09]

Aarsdale, 2008

2011-08-31T10:08:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 18x20 inches, Private Collection Menlo Park, CA [MJ55-08]

Laguna & Broadway, 2009

2011-08-31T09:37:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 28x16 inches, Private Collection, Portola Valley, CA [MJ75-09]

Knaths and Diebenkorn

2011-02-18T09:56:00.001-08:00

In 2008 I volunteered to re-edit Susan Larsen’s interviews with Richard Diebenkorn. The Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian sent me cassettes and I listened to Diebenkorn talk while working in my studio and driving in the car. It took weeks to carefully comb the transcripts, but it was fascinating to hear Diebenkorn’s thoughtfulness with each response. The one important error I identified, and I don’t know how many years it was in the Smithsonian transcript, is when Larsen asks Diebenkorn about his early visits to DC to see Duncan Phillips’ museum and in particular the American Moderns in that collection. Strangely, Kandinsky was substituted for Knaths in the original transcription masking Diebenkorn’s double mention of Knaths. This intrigued me partially because my teachers Paul Resikaand Leland Bell were fans of Knaths. Would art historians have found the combination of John Marin and Kandinsky strange in a discussion of American Modernsim? The point is that while Diebenkorn aligned Knaths with Marin and Matisse and Bonnard the attention he drew to Knaths’s work was lost for years since few people hear the actual interview while doing research. I imagine the Knaths historians would be happy to know. Susan Larsen told me in an e-mail that there is no connection between the incorrect appearance of Kandinsky in the 1985 interview transcript and her further mention of Kandinsky in the subsequent 1987 Diebenkorn oral history interview.

Green Door (Truro), 2006-2007

2011-02-18T09:38:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 12x16 inches, Collection Nerman Museum, Overland Park, KS [MJ60-07]

Corot to Monet to Cezanne to Matisse

2011-02-18T09:31:00.001-08:00

Corot detail: "La Trinite-des-Monts"

My favorite stop in Paris is the Salle de Corot in the upper level of the Louvre. I have many friends who are surprised by my own-going passion for Corot – a painter quickly categorized as classical who single handedly carved the way for Impressionism and Cezanne and Modernism. The detail above is the corner of a landscape called La Trinite-des-Monts which would have been seen by every aspiring French artist of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. This loosely rendered, powerful area of the canvas sets up a tremendous push and pull between other more finished areas of the painting and it looks at once like a moment of a Matisse, perhaps even a passage from an early Diebenkorn. As I have said in earlier posts, it is impossible to imagine a painter like Monet, Cezanne or Matisse evolving without Corot’s remarkably plastic surfaces and language. It helps to see his work in the flesh to appreciate the activity of the paint, the complexity of his edits and the visual intelligence of this profoundly influential “classical” old man.

Not Goethe Triangle

2011-02-18T09:28:00.000-08:00

I was looking through my copy of Josef Albers’ complete, Interaction of Colorrecently getting ready to speak to some kids about color theory. I don’t know how many people have noticed that the Goethe Triangle appears in some of the versions of Interaction of Color but not all of them. The triangle is certainly in my reissued version of the complete original as it should be, but there’s an interesting story about the triangle, whose silk screen was prepared by Rackstraw Downes and another Yale student at Albers request for the original, handmade Interaction of Color. Albers first saw the triangle in a small german book on color theory written by Carry van Biema. There are notes at the Albers Foundation that document Albers search for Biema’s book as he was preparing the final copy of Interaction of Color. It turns out that Biema made up the Goethe triangle and if I remember correctly how Fred Horowitz explained this to me, Albers knew about the mistake before he died, but long after his book had legitimized Biema’s creation. I only bring this up because the triangle is all over the internet and in art classrooms – even at Brown. The best part of this little tale is that if the triangle helps people learn, then it doesn’t really matter who created the first version and I think Albers would agree. The error somehow drives home Albers own point about how complex and problematic it is to teach color theory and how personal the experience of color can be for anyone who takes its study seriously. Albers was a big advocate of practice before theory in opposition to Itten who advocated lots of confusing science, “facts” and theory as a prerequisite to hands-on learning.

Numana (Black), 2004

2011-01-21T10:00:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 16x18 inches, Private Collection, San Francisco [MJ29-04]

Near Selcuk (Siringe), 2009

2011-01-21T09:32:00.001-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 18x20 inches, Private Collection, Redwood City, CA [MJ71-09]

Sonoma Barns (Summer), 2002

2011-01-21T08:49:00.001-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 34x40 inches, Private Collection, Palo Alto, CA [MJ18-02]

Tangerine, 2008-2010

2011-01-21T08:38:00.001-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 38x58 inches, Private Collection, Palo Alto, CA [MJ62-10]

Fillipi, 2010

2011-01-21T08:36:00.001-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 26x42 inches, Private Collection, Italy [MJ51-10]

Bosphurus #7 (Red), 2010

2011-01-21T08:33:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 20x28 inches, Private Collection, Hillsborough, CA [MJ05-10]

Bosphurus #14 (Persepolis), 2010

2011-01-21T08:26:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 40x60 inches, Private Collection, San Francisco [MJ31-10]

Mitchell Johnson Reception in Kansas City September 23, 2010

2010-09-18T09:51:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 16x20 inches, Private Collection, Atherton, CA

Twenty of my paintings are in a new exhibit, Mitchell Johnson: Selected paintings 1990-2010 at the Thornhill Gallery at Avila University in Kansas City. The show is up August 27-September 23, 2010. I will be there for the CLOSING RECEPTION on thursday September 23 from 5-8pm. New catalogs are now available.

Truro (Morning), 2009

2010-09-13T06:00:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 18x24 inches, Private Collection, Massachusetts [MJ38-09]

Truro (Green Square), 2008

2010-09-13T05:54:00.001-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson, oil on linen, 20x24 inches, Private Collection, Massachusetts [MJ47-08]

Bosphurus #12 (For Ghino), 2010

2010-07-28T11:35:00.001-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson oil/linen 16x32 inches 41/82 cm Private Collection California

Bosphurus #11 (For P.K.), 2010

2010-07-28T11:31:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson oil/linen 42x70 inches 107/183 cm Private Collection California

Bosphurus #6 (Stripes), 2009-2010

2010-06-02T10:55:00.000-07:00

©Mitchell Johnson oil/linen 18x20 inches 41/46 cm Private Collection Beijing [MJ04-10]

This painting is from a series titled "Bosphurus" that I began shortly before a 2009 trip to Turkey. The small abstract paintings in this group are a bit more hard edged than the gestural, loose surfaces of my large abstract work.

Cerrillos Cloud IV, 1993

2010-05-18T18:02:00.001-07:00

In 1992 I received a grant from the Santa Fe Institute of Fine Arts and instead of going back to France for the summer I found myself in New Mexico for the summer. When I came back to Palo Alto from that trip, I began making a series of large cloud paintings. The one above from 1993 is in the collection of the New Mexico Museum of Art.

Richard Diebenkorn at Paul Thiebaud Gallery, April, 2010

2010-04-18T10:04:00.000-07:00

Richard Diebenkorn Girl with Plant, 1960 The Phillips Collection

Yesterday was the first time I have seen a large group of Richard Diebenkorn’s work since editing the Susan Larsen interviews for the Archives of American Art last summer. Many of the pieces in this show at Paul Thiebaud Gallery are very familiar to Diebenkorn fans, but this is a rare chance to see them together, in person, where their connectedness can often surprise and intrigue. Diebenkorn is well known for his desire to achieve a “tension beneath calm” and though some claim this was mostly achieved in his enormous Ocean Park canvases, the range of drawings and paintings from Christopher Diebenkorn’s personal collection, reminds us that from very early out, Diebenkorn was determined to reconcile abstract expressionism’s shortcomings with the help of Matisse. Because the show is not overly curated we can see that for all of the disciplined periods Diebenkorn travelled, he was always in touch with whim and instinct. Unlike, the detached, brand-like abstraction of Clifford Still, this intimate show quickly establishes that Diebenkorn was continually searching, emotionally engaged and never an advocate of style. One of the most striking moments of the Larsen interviews (and relevant to this show) is when Diebenkorn acknowledges that artists of the generations to follow him might never understand the violence he found and relied upon in Cezanne; Cezanne is too familiar to us. Likewise one must wonder if we can see for ourselves how challenging the pieces in this gem of a show were for Diebenkorn’s own time.

Palo Alto n. 23, 2006

2010-03-12T05:03:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson oil/linen 56x84 inches 142/213 cm Private Collection California [MJ49-06]

Exhibit at the Royal Danish Embassy, Washington, DC

2010-02-24T10:48:00.000-08:00

New Redwood City Studio

An exhibit of my paintings is now at the Royal Danish Embassy in Washington, DC through April 7. Please call the embassy to find out about viewing hours: 202-234-4300. Some of the paintings in the exhibit are included in the newest catalog which features an interview with Peter Selz.

"Staten," 2005

2010-02-09T11:13:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 22x38 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ100-05]

"Bavaria #1," 2008

2010-02-01T16:57:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 16x20 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ45-08]

"Palo Alto #17 (Twins)," 2006

2010-02-01T06:12:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 44x52 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ44-06]

"Mt. Oliveto (White Road)," 2004

2010-01-30T12:22:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 56x72 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ23-04]

"Bornholm (Five)," 2003

2010-01-30T07:06:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 16x18 inches oil/linen Private Collection Los Angeles [MJ27-03]

"Bornholm (Yellow Raft)," 2003

2010-01-29T18:10:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 16x24 inches oil/linen Private Collection Palo Alto [MJ26-03]

This little beach painting from Bornholm, Denmark was in my 2003 exhibition at Terrence Rogers Fine Art in Santa Monica. It appears in the June, 2004 issue of Art News where the show was reviewed by Susan Emerling.

"Truro (Blue Door)," 2007-2008

2010-01-29T07:22:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 42x72 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ12-08]

"Green Sandals," 2009

2010-01-27T12:24:00.001-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 20x24 inches oil/linen Private Collection Palo Alto, CA [MJ60-09]

"Helgumannen #1," 2008

2010-01-27T11:35:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 12x18 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ35-09]

In 1989 when I first started traveling to Europe to paint and visit museums, I stayed with a friend on the Swedish island, Gotland. I have the most profound memories of that trip as it was my first experience with completely new qualities of light and color and design. In 2008 I was lucky to return to Gotland to paint and revisit familiar places. At the northern end of Gotland is another island, Fårö, the final home of the famous director, Ingmar Bergman. On this island, a former military reservation, is a collection of tiny fisherman shacks called Helgumannen. I painted here one morning just before 5:30am catching the sunrise that followed a night storm.

"Bornholm," 2006

2010-01-27T09:41:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 40x40 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ28-06]

"Near Buonconvento," 2007

2010-01-27T09:12:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 11x14 inches oil/linen Private Collection New York

I painted this little canvas on-location when I was in Italy two years ago. I had it around the studio for about a year and then when my dealer called and asked for several small paintings for a group show I took it out and immediately added the red bar on the left. The bar woke up the color and focused the feeling of the painting making a more accurate record of the chilly, calm morning when I stood at the side of the road painting.

"Guston," 2008

2010-01-27T06:17:00.001-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 16x20 inches oil/linen Private Collection Los Angeles [MJ03-08]

"Yellow Chairs," 2009

2010-01-26T19:52:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 20x24 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ58-09]

"Cascina," 2008

2010-01-26T19:42:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 12x16 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ23-08]

"Bornholm (Fifteen)," 2009

2010-01-26T19:38:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 28x48 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ53-09]

"Smogen," 2008

2010-01-26T19:34:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 20x60 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ56-08]

"Truro (Red Doors)," 2008

2010-01-26T19:26:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 22x38 inches oil/linen Private Collection California

"Truro (Grass Green)," 2008

2010-01-24T20:15:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 18x24 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ41-08]

"Truro (Blue Dusk)," 2008

2010-01-24T20:12:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 20x30 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ65-08]

"Meyreuil," 2005

2010-01-24T19:45:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 20x24 inches oil/linen Private Collection California [MJ40-05]

"White Wall (Numana)," 2005

2010-01-24T19:42:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 24x28 inches oil/linen Private Collection San Francisco [MJ24-05]

"Gotland #1 (Hallshuk)," 2008

2010-01-23T18:40:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 16x24 inches, oil/linen Collection Swedish Consulate San Francisco [MJ43-08]

"Cadiere D'Azur (Dawn)," 2004

2010-01-23T18:38:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 16x24 inches, oil/linen Private Collection New York [MJ08-04]

"Piana (Storm)," 2004

2010-01-23T18:35:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 14x18 inches, oil/linen Private Collection New York [MJ07-04]

"Gilroy," 1999

2010-01-23T18:21:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 22x42 inches, oil/linen Private Collection Palo Alto, CA [MJ12-99]

"D&L (Red)," 2009

2010-01-23T18:18:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 16x20 inches, oil/linen Private Collection Atherton, CA [MJ62-09]

"Stoic," 2009

2010-01-19T09:45:00.001-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 14x18 inches oil/linen Private Collection [MJ65-09]

"Bornholm (Half)," 2007-2009

2010-01-19T09:22:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 16x24 inches, oil/linen Private Collection Menlo Park, CA [MJ50-09]

"Butterfly," 2006-2007

2010-01-16T19:59:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 57x84 inches oil/linen Private Collection San Jose, California

"Baghdad," 2006-2007

2010-01-16T19:53:00.000-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 58x84 inches, oil/linen Collection Palo Alto Medical Foundation

"Below Lucignano," 2001

2010-01-16T19:50:00.001-08:00

©Mitchell Johnson 44x34 inches oil/linen Collection of Palo Alto Medical Foundation

"Gray Bornholm," 2007

2010-01-16T19:48:00.001-08:00

"Truro (Bands)," 2008

2010-01-13T20:01:00.001-08:00

"Turtle," 2008

2010-01-13T19:58:00.001-08:00

"Valensole," 2009

2010-01-13T19:55:00.000-08:00

"Bosphurus #4," 2009

2010-01-13T19:50:00.000-08:00

"Truro," 2007

2010-01-11T06:32:00.001-08:00

"Bornholm," 2008

2010-01-11T06:29:00.000-08:00

"Pest," 2008

2010-01-05T21:18:00.000-08:00

"Helgumannen," 2008

2010-01-05T21:16:00.000-08:00

"Near Munich," 2007

2010-01-05T21:03:00.000-08:00

"Tyrol," 2007

2010-01-05T20:56:00.001-08:00

"Truro," 2008

2010-01-05T20:53:00.000-08:00

"Across from Lucignano," 2005

2010-01-05T20:46:00.001-08:00

"Poppies (Sinalunga)," 2008

2010-01-05T20:43:00.001-08:00

"Bornholm Family," 2003

2010-01-04T20:03:00.000-08:00

I have painted in Bornholm four summers over the past 8 years; the weather has been completely different on each trip. We first went there in July, 2002, after some friends and relatives had suggested that it might be an interesting change from the places I normally paint in France and Italy. Bornholm is closer to Germany, Poland and Sweden than it is to the main part of Denmark. It enjoys a mild Baltic climate and has different vegetation from both Sweden and Denmark because of it's microclimate. Nevertheless, summer there is completely unpredictable. We lucked out on our first trip and the small sandy beach where we stayed on the south of the island called, Dueodde, had sunny windless weather for a week. The odd east-west running beach was PACKED with Poles, Germans and Danes worshipping the sun. The array of towels, umbrellas, tents and colors against the fine soft gray sand offered a color expense I have never witnessed since. I photographed and considered the color every minute we were at the water. None of the photos came close to the light or color but I was able to collage various items and work from memory to come up with paintings that spoke to the remarkable time at the beach. This particular little painting, was based on a photo from a disposable camera with a plastic lens and a fixed shutter speed. The sunset photos taken with that camera came closest to the color space of the Dueodde beach. This little painting is something of an homage to my teacher, Leland Bell.

"Bethany," 2008

2010-01-04T19:56:00.001-08:00

I made this painting in my Palo Alto studio shortly after I came back from a residency at the Josef and Anni Albers Foundation in Connecticut. It made more sense to me to make this painting in California, missing the fall woods and leaves that surrounded me during my stay in the northeast. The painting is completely about color and how important the white provided by the house is to the luminosity of the rest of the composition. Yet, there is also a sentimentality for how the woods reminded me of fall on Staten Island where I lived as a teenager.

"Truro," 2007

2010-01-04T19:50:00.001-08:00

"Bornholm," 2006

2010-01-04T19:45:00.001-08:00

"Near Lucignano," 2005

2010-01-04T19:39:00.000-08:00

"Palo Alto #2 (Luca)," 2005

2010-01-04T19:30:00.001-08:00

This painting was in my 2006 exhibition, Color, Context and Perception, at Terrence Rogers Fine Art in Santa Monica. This is from a series of paintings entitled "Palo Alto" because they were all being made in the studio and felt more connected to one another than any body of work I had produced to date. Parts of this painting were painted with a large brush and other parts were massed in with a palette knife. You can see the texture if you click and enlarge the image.

"Diamonds (For Eggleston & Richter)," 2009

2010-01-04T06:13:00.000-08:00

This painting is based on a photo I took in Austria in 2009. During that same trip I had been in Munich and seen both the large Gerhard Richter and William Eggleston exhibits at the Haus der Kunst. A very wise friend told me that if I was headed to the Richter show of huge abstract paintings, I better not miss the Eggleston photographs in another part of the museum. I had seen Eggleston occasionally, but I was blown away by his color photographs and they were one of the best moments in Munich. When I was back in the studio in Palo Alto making this painting, I thought a great deal about both of those exhibits - Richter's over-the-top large abstract paintings and Eggleston's mysterious, playful and personal photos.

"Alta Plaza (Red)," 2009

2010-01-04T06:01:00.000-08:00

Some areas of this painting are quite literal, while others have been reduced to simple squares or rectangles. Windows were included or mentioned when they helped to achieve the color interaction and a musicality that felt right. I think that's why this view has always and continues to attract me - because of it's formal possibilities for discussing color and shape. The cropped building in the front was made larger to fill the lower part of the painting and provide a diagonal. These are edits that I make instinctively when the painting still doesn't feel resolved.

"Lakeview," 1990

2010-01-03T18:55:00.000-08:00

This is one of the first paintings I made in California when I moved to Palo Alto in the fall of 1990 from Manhattan to work as a studio assistant for Sam Francis. I drove to the Lakeview district of San Francisco and painted outside three days in a row to make this painting. I was very intrigued by the rectangles of the windows in the center of the painting and the challenging perspective of the streets. The color in the painting is far more interesting and subtle in life than in this jpeg. The composition was also an exciting shift from the paintings I had been making on the street and in parks on the lower east side of Manhattan. I wasn't that familiar with Bay Area painters other than Diebenkorn and David Park when I arrived, but I immediately felt like the weather, light and space of northern California was right for what I wanted to do. The painting is in a private collection in Wisconsin.

"Torrenieri," 2007-2009

2010-01-03T18:49:00.000-08:00

"Vipiteno," 2009

2010-01-03T11:27:00.000-08:00

I've made several small paintings of this group of barns and houses. Vipiteno, also called Sterzing, is the last town in Sudtirol before you hit Brennero and cross into Austria. I stumbled onto this view when driving from Tuscany to Berlin in 2006. I pulled over on the side of the autostrada at dusk and took photos in 2006 balancing my camera on the steel guard rail as big trucks passed within a few feet and the light faded behind the Alps. What is fascinating about these buildings is that for those of us unfamiliar with their true massive scale, from a distance they are not only miniature, but also mysterious as we don't know how to rescale them to interpret the space of the view. It is the same phenomena that leads us to believe that the moon (see moon illusion) is larger when seen at the horizon as opposed to high in the sky, void of context. The gray bar of color on the side was added to indirectly shift the hue and saturation levels of the small blocks of color.

"Les Lecques (Chairs)," 2004

2010-01-03T11:04:00.000-08:00

"Bornholm Barns," 2004

2010-01-02T22:26:00.000-08:00

This painting is now in a private collection in Palo Alto, California. It was in a number of shows and each time it returned to the studio I was thrilled to have it back. I first went to Bornholm in 2002 and this island became very important for my work. The shift to a more distilled, geometric approach in both my figurative and abstract work can be traced to my first trips to this special island. I think the intimate scale of the fishing villages and harbors found in Bornholm made me realize that for the viewer to understand my feelings about color I would have to develop a more distilled, shape driven style that allowed for a direct experience with the color. I didn't outgrow the brushier, more impressionistic paintings I was making throughout the 90's, I simply chose to be more candid about my concern for color relationships. This painting, which was based on a smaller painting done from a photo, captures a kind of overall color I had been chasing for years.

Meyreuil landscape from Nancy Meyers film, It's Complicated

2009-12-29T10:51:00.000-08:00

This is one of the two landscapes that appears in It's Complicated.

"Cooler with Stripes," 2003

2008-01-30T14:31:00.001-08:00

"Palo Alto #11 (Winter)," 2005

2008-01-30T14:23:00.000-08:00

Studio Photo 2006

2008-01-30T14:22:00.001-08:00