The Hanging of Goodman
Just wanted to say that G lib and I checked out the show the Sunday before last (i.e., a week early, mistakenly). We were pleased to see some old faovrites there--the sasquatch painting especially--and interested to see the prevalence of dead locust and willow trees in the left-hand corners of many canvases. (At least, that's what they looked like.)
HOWEVER, I do have to say that the lighting was sub-optimal. In one or two cases, the lights illuminated the wall above the canvas but not the canvas itself. Even when light hit the canvas, it came at such a high angle as to cause the most heavily impastoed points to cast shadows on the canvas below them. It gave a great sense of topography, but obscured some details of color.
-pchippy
(Yes, I know the sasquatch painting isn't really about sasquatch, and the narcissistic california dude sunning himself in the center of the painting isn't really anywhere but in my head. But I can't help it. That's what I see.)
I think it was hanging on your dining-room wall at Prescott Street.
At the end of the day, the West Side Lounge is a restaurant, not an art gallery. If only for the effect of forcing Lara to get a few paintings done, I think it was a success. Surely, the lighting, placement over tables, and nature of the space were not conducive to art viewing. In that way, it was a disappointment (also the rudeness of some of the waitstaff to people paying perfectly good money to sling a few back at the bar).
It doesn't hurt that she has sold "Hurricane's After", which evokes a desolate, yet cleansing, feeling for me. Maybe the name prods me in that direction.
I feel like I lack the vocabulary to discuss abstract art. On the other hand, the fact that it is abstract should remove the barriers to discussion. I don't need to know about technique or know anything about the form of the subject or decode any social meanings, merely what emotions do the images evoke for me the viewer should be enough. It's hard for me to let go of the search for form within the pieces, though.