Award-winning NYC blogazine with a focus on painting
Saturday, October 3, 2026
Contributed by Ben Godward / Mark Greenwold, the painter, once told me, “The best art is dumb.” He said that I always understood that. I took it as a compliment. I think what he meant was that effective art appeals to our most basic needs, desires, and senses. Christopher K. Ho’s current sculpture exhibition “Waterloo!” at Ellie Rines Gallery – formerly known as 56 Henry but now on 46 Walker Street – fits that humble formulation and does it ever work.
Contributed by Margaret McCann / “The Soul of Nature”at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of many exhibitions dedicated to German Romantic painter Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) on the 250th anniversary of his death. Some of his finest are absent – the epic Sea of Ice’s vision of an arctic shipwreck, The Great Enclosure’s resonant view of a Dresden field Napoleon amassed his troops on, or Ruine Eldena, one of Friedrich’s many depictions of the remnants of the powerful Catholic monastery his hometown Griefswald formed around. But there are numerous studies displaying his keen observation of nature, research he used for paintings creatively orchestrated in the studio.
Contributed by Jason Andrew / Daisy Sheff’s exhibition “Begun in the Dazzling Sunshine” at Parker Gallery’s new space on Melrose in Los Angeles, intertwines reality with the fantastical. Her paintings employ leaping animals, fussy architectures, and bright flora to explain narratives that tease the peculiar logic of fairy tales. Their uneven surfaces, cleverly devised characters, and woolly layered scenes are busy and unwieldy. To interpret them is like piecing together the plot of a really great dream.
