Posts Tagged ‘painting’
Opening the Door: A Conversation with Abstract Painter Lanecia Rouse Tinsley
Lanecia Rouse Tinsley is an abstract artist based in Houston, Texas. She creates out of a desire to make the invisible landscapes within us known, using texture, form and color to speak to life in ways she feels words cannot. She says she is drawn to the “negative spaces” in life—times of ambiguity and uncertainty, silence and mystery.
Read MorePoetry Friday: “Japanese Wall Hanging”
June 23, 2017
I find myself reading this poem both literally and as a metaphor for our lives. On the literal level, Moira Linehan focuses with intensely loving detail on the Japanese brush painter. The first four lines list with tender concern all the things that might go wrong in the painting process. The next five lines move…
Read MorePoetry Friday: “The Last Supper”
April 7, 2017
This poem is a meditation on Leonardo da Vinci’s famous painting, “The Last Supper.” But the meditation moves in an unexpected direction. The first stanza stays with the painting, though with a comical interpretation of “torn bread” scattered on the tablecloth. In stanza two, the poet moves to the wine—“or seeming / lack of it.”…
Read MoreMy Bad Italy Novel
March 29, 2017
February is offseason in Rome, so today the city is a little gray, a little quiet, if ever it could be such a thing. I’m standing on the steps of San Luigi Dei Francesi church, buzzing a little from a sugary espresso. I’m gearing up to enter the church and see, for the fourth time…
Read MoreSouvenirs from the Waste Land: An Interview with Alastair John Gordon, Part 2
March 14, 2017
Continued from yesterday. Alastair John Gordon’s newest exhibit, “Souvenirs from the Waste Land,” draws on the postcard collection of Howard and Roberta Ahmanson, philanthropists and art collectors in L.A. Their collection includes mementos from their travels, scenes of architectural interest, and reproductions of works of art—over 18,500 postcards in all. I spoke with Gordon by…
Read MoreSouvenirs from the Waste Land: An Interview with Alastair John Gordon, Part 1
March 13, 2017
Historically, modern art has prized originality and authenticity. But alongside this tradition runs another set of practices: replication and tactics of illusion. The Romans made copies of Greek sculptures; Northern Europeans in the seventeenth century practiced an illusionistic approach to still life painting called quodlibet, or “what you will”; American pop art reproduced images…
Read MoreA Love Supreme: The Surprising Art of Sedrick Huckaby
December 26, 2016
This essay is a web exclusive accompanying Image journal’s current issue, #90. Homely, decorative, domestic—that’s how most of us think of quilting: something a sweet grandmother does while humming an old tune and waiting for a pie to cool on the rack. It’s a comfy-seeming practice we associate with homemaking and mothering—vocations mostly overlooked…
Read MoreArt, Icons, and Ant Ovaries
October 11, 2016
“A world created out of silence gives itself over to prayer.” I’m listening to local painter Debra Korluka discuss her work: the icons she’s painted since she was a child studying in the Ukrainian Orthodox church. I’m interested in the symbolism of an icon’s composition and in the paints—their colors, chemistry, poisons, and history. All…
Read MoreThe Only Answer is Voyage
October 7, 2011
Impressions flood in on me: grayness; verticality; burning; ice, splitting; verdancy. The distant; the present. Wild swathes of light, of intense growth—is that a tree? a body of water? fire? Cold, crisp, thin air? I am standing in a small, warmly lit gallery. Paintings on the third and fourth days of creation surround me. Substances…
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