Kent Twitchell at 80

There is something beyond language in the feeling one gets when a childhood encounter with art is repeated later in life. It is a combination of familiarity and time travel, the reincarnation of what was loosening the grip of the continuum that brought us to our present; loosened if only for a moment. It isn’t … Read more

Chapter 5: Connect the Moving Dots

In between projects I like to deliver completed works, then clean and de-clutter the studio. It’s a good time to re-assess where I’m at and my direction from here. Recently I watched the Andy Warhol Diaries documentary. I’ve read the book. I was more interested in footage of Warhol’s studio set up, including a handmade wall chart … Read more

Antonio Lechuga FENCES in Fort Worth

Author note: One week after submitting this article for publication, artist Antonio Lechuga was shot while jogging outside of his studio. He survived and is in stable condition. A GoFundMe has been set up to assist his family:https://gofund.me/f68b9e8f (With a quiet rage that threatens to consume him.)– Fences by August Wilson, Act Two, Scene Two … Read more

Is Walter Robinson Just Dying to Enjoy Painting?

New York painter Walter Robinson has been exhibiting since the early 1980s. There is a whole mythology of the East Village Scene™ among New York Baby Boomers that took place in the late seventies and early eighties. While it did give us Haring, Scharff and most importantly Basquiat, the proof it was little more than … Read more

Down and Dirty with Picasso at LACMA

Pablo Picasso, Creator/Destroyer as the title of one of his many biographies observed. Pablo Picasso, selfish prick or genius… or both? If any artist of the twentieth century “contained multitudes” in the way Walt Whitman observed about actualizing the many lenses of human potential, it was Picasso. The Los Angeles County Museum of Art has … Read more

Letter to the Editor

Mat,  Barbara Kruger’s work has never made me feel “sad” or be a “buzzkill” but your visceral article of immediacy surely has. Standing on the shoulders of giants leaves you cold, Mat? What other giant in the art industry are you going to take a hack at next? Take a swing at Cindy Sherman while … Read more

Ricardo Garcia’s Covid Impetus

It is Spring in a vestigial Los Angeles, as the bustling, outdoor enthusiasts who comprise the United States’ second-largest city populous, are confined to their homes due to a COVID-19 quarantine mandate. Four million Angelenos, who are ready for the tepid season’s social gatherings, concerts, restaurant reservations, beach and canyon outings, Dodgers games, and gallery … Read more

LACMA Surveys Barbara Grifter. I Mean Kruger. I Mean Grifter.

Of all the legacies the art market and its institutions have collaborated to spawn and cultivate, the most self-congratulatory of them all by far is that of Barbara Kruger. The fog of memory clouds our collective recollection concerning her signature style – scaled hectoring – is it a relic of the eighties? Or do we … Read more

Encaustic Tipping Points Swirl in Seattle

REVIEW: Elise Wagner – Tipping Points Frederick Holmes Gallery, Seattle • May 5 – 31, 2022 Shimmering like heat waves over mysterious landscapes, Elise Wagner’s solo exhibition of encaustic works at Frederick Holmes Gallery in Seattle combines a visionary sweep of terrestrial and celestial adventures with intriguingly sensual surfaces and dynamic fields of color and … Read more

Artist LAURA MARSH on Placemaking & Activation

The Art World has been reacting to our increasingly digital age with the material, the tactile, and craft. While the current Whitney Biennale is overrun with digital and video art, the results from the 2022 Venice Biennale tell the other side of the story. Women from all over the world (Simone Leigh, Precious Okoyomon, Acaye … Read more