Painters on Paintings is a conversation between contemporary artists and their influences across time.
This Week’s Highlights: Flesh of Light
In David Humphrey’s first post with Painters on Paintings in 2014 on James Ensor’s Protrait of Augusta Boogaerts, he talks about misreading as a way into insight. Mistaking Nietzsche’s thoughts on revelation as “flesh of light,” (instead of the correct but much less... read morePoP Highlights
Sarah Slappey on James Ensor
James Ensor, The Tribulations of Saint Anthony, 1887, Oil on canvas, 46 ⅜ x 66 inches James Ensor, Pieter Bruegel the Elder, and Hieronymous Bosch have all painted depictions of the torment of Saint Anthony by demons and monsters. In Ensor’s Tribulations of Saint...
Barry Nemett on Gwen John
The building weighs less than a flower. The parasol stem dreams about being a wicker chair…
David Humphrey on James Ensor
Misreading pleases me almost as much as mishearing. The read or heard phrase arrives into consciousness seeming to belong to someone else…
Recent Articles
John Michael Byrd on Kelli Scott Kelley
To my eyes, this is a love letter to the maternal archetype—the maternal ideal.
Carol Diamond on Al Held
Each hue resonates as cool or warm, deep or shallow, allowing the eye and the sensibility to soak in energy, light and form as pure color sensation.
Yvette Gellis on Katharina Grosse
Then there is the color itself – the purity of color and the psychological effects that pure color can have not only on the eye, but also on one’s emotional states and well-being.
David Humphrey on William John Whittemore
I like thinking, though, that the painting makes a complete body out of dispersed heterogeneous parts, a complicated body constrained and subdivided by guardrails, pedestals, canvas edges, bowler hats and neckties.
Johanna Robinson on Maria Lassnig
… she only painted the parts of her body that she could physically feel in the moment…
Suzanne Stryk on Maria Sibylla Merian
Most alluring to me is her enviable touch—the delicately notched antennae, chomped and curled leaves, or gooey-pale larvae casting shadows as they inch along.