In his second solo show at Matteawan Gallery, on view through Sunday, November 5, Brooklyn artist Björn Meyer-Ebrecht (b. Hamburg, Germany) presents abstract drawings and a site-specific installation that expand his ongoing interest in the basic elements of architecture. Readers may remember the unorthodox exhibitions Meyer-Ebrecht organized during Bushwick Open Studios […]
Artist’s Notebook
Ideas and Influences: Erika Ranee
Several years ago, Two Coats of Paint encountered Erika Ranee’s paintings during an open studio event at the Marie Sharpe Walsh Foundation. Soaked with vibrant color, her large-scale abstractions were exuberant conglomerations of snippets culled from the overlooked details of everyday life. On the occasion of her “Zip-A-Dee-A,” a solo show earlier this year at the Mazmanian Gallery at Framingham State University, Two Coats invited Ranee to share ten ideas or influences that inform her recent work.
When do artists leave the country?
Contributed by Sharon Butler / On Wednesday, MarketWatch, a financial blog published by the Dow Jones company, ran a provocative piece suggesting that the time might be approaching for Americans to begin planning an exit strategy from Trumplandia. To cut to the chase, Brett Arends, one of their financial columnists […]
Peter Dudek returns from the Berkshires
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Peter Dudek spent his summer up in the Berkshires where he and his brother oversee Bascom Lodge, an old-fashioned hikers’ inn on the top of Mount Greylock. For the past few years Dudek has been hosting a small residency program–readers may recall I spent time […]
Storage or dumpster? Organizing the archives
Readers who have been following Two Coats of Paint since the beginning know that for ten years I taught at a state university in Connecticut and kept my studio in the attic of an old Victorian house in downtown Mystic. In 2010 I moved back to New York and, after […]
Brushwork: Philip Guston 1957-1967
Contributed by Sharon Butler / Here’s a quote and some images by Philip Guston: “I do not see why the loss of faith in the known image and symbol in our time should be celebrated as a freedom. It is a loss from which we suffer, and this pathos motivates […]
Ideas and Influences: Adam Simon
Adam Simon could best be described as a conceptual painter. Based in Brooklyn, he has been painting and organizing community projects like Four Walls and the Fine Art Adoption Network for more than 25 years. Lately, though, he’s put community projects aside to work in the studio, where his ironically […]
Peter Dudek on Presentational Sculpture*
Guest Contributor Peter Dudek / Lately a presentational mode of sculpture has been popping up all about. The hallmarks are a casual yet formal arrangement of sculptural elements. The constituent parts vary from the made-from-scratch, to the merely found, to the found but altered object. The presentations might include works […]
Tracking Loren MacIver
The snow on the fire escape this morning (courtesy of superstorm Jonas) reminded me of this 2008 piece about Loren MacIver that I originally published in The Brooklyn Rail: In my first college painting course, which I took several years after completing an art history degree, my teacher Arnold Trachtman […]
Barbara Campbell Thomas: Ten Images (or An Abstract Painter�s Pilgrimage to Italy)
Guest Contributor Barbara Campbell Thomas / Journeying to Italy in order to bask in the perfectly toned muscular glow of High Renaissance art is a well-worn artist narrative. But while visiting Italy this past June, I bypassed the usual cast of characters entirely, taking in Florence mostly while dragging my […]