Painters
Van Gogh In the Road
On an exotic summer Sunday I step into the Santa Barbara Museum of Art and head not toward a vision but a sound. “It’s the light or, rather, the lack of light in The Outskirts of Paris that makes this dirt road and the man in it faceless and gray and in need of southern…
Read MoreWater Rights
“Help us, please,” says an erect white man shooting his rifle. “What should I do?” “Pick up a rifle and start firing.” “You and your partner have the only two.” “Then go get help.” “You deserve help from an Indian scout?” “Sure. My buddy and I’d be happy to just give the Indians the whole…
Read MoreVan Gogh on the Verge
Handing over my ticket, I’m excited to enter the Van Gogh Museum for another emotional exhibition. I’ve been to many and read about all the others. On the Verge of Insanity is a great title. By that I mean it’s appropriate. Look at Self-Portrait with a Bandaged Ear and Pipe: Vincent looms under a heavy…
Read MoreSlab Man
My husband left me last night not for another woman but because he just found out I loved his best friend but that shouldn’t have mattered much since that guy’d dumped me a couple of weeks earlier. I sure was feeling bad this afternoon and told my boss I had a fever and needed to…
Read MoreGuy Rose Paints a Peasant
“Pardon me, Madame,” I say in French to a lady framed in the Crocker Art Museum. “May I ask you a few questions?” “You can see I’m busy, I reckon.” “Yes, but you’ve been at this task a long time and I thought you could take a little break.” “I’ll keep working, go ahead and…
Read MoreDeli Delight
I was hungry and the manager of the gallery showing wild faces said the deli across the street’s world famous go on over and get something. Okay I said and pressed the steel arrow to red-light busy Melrose Ave. and allow me to cross. Inside the deli large glass cases featured food I began studying…
Read MoreFreud and Wife Visit Picasso
In Paris Lucian and I again socialize with other glamorous and creative people, and most mornings he paints while I write, imagining myself a female Fitzgerald thirty years after Scott brought exotic but doomed Zelda to this marvelous city. Several Parisiennes tell me Lucian and I might be an even more dazzling couple. Within a…
Read MoreParking Lot Painter
No one buys my oil paintings on canvas. No one buys my acrylics. No one buys my watercolors. No one hires me to paint murals. They’re all fools. I have great work crying to be seen, and I prove it every weekend at street painting festivals all over. We don’t actually paint. We draw, usually…
Read MorePortraits on Glass
I’m a little nervous before talking to audiences about my work but usually warm up and tell part of my story and then am ready to improvise and answer questions. This morning they come nonstop from about a hundred visitors, quite a few for an art lecture, at Bakersfield Museum of Art, in the gallery…
Read MoreMental Steroids
A physician of renown I certainly am, though for a generation I have focused most of my intellect on the rather irrelevant albeit stimulating task of helping athletes run faster, jump higher, hit more home runs, and register more knockouts with shoulder pads and fists. Only in recent years have activists tried to persuade me…
Read MoreArt Appraisals
To an interviewer who asked Mick Jagger if he had any art, the slender septuagenarian said, well, I just have several paintings people have given me and a few I’ve bought, but it’s definitely not what you’d call a collection, and they (the bad guys) know that so they never bother coming to my place.…
Read MoreGrady Harp Reviews “Paint it Blue”
Amazon.com Hall of Fame reviewer Grady Harp recently posted this review on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com Paint it Blue by George Thomas Clark 7 of 7 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars Oh to be a fly on the wall…. May 6, 2015 By Grady Harp HALL OF FAME TOP 100…
Read MoreEruption of Enrique Guzman
You consider that a national-prize painting, ten feet of completely black resin and charcoal offering no message or creativity. I don’t care we’re in the Palacio de Bellas Artes in Mexico City and some might say I’m jealous I didn’t win. Nonsense. It’s necessary to be outraged and impossible to tolerate such a mockery of…
Read MoreTouch of Saturnino Herran
You’ve never heard of me? That’s all right, don’t apologize. Most people haven’t. I’ll explain. I am born in this city, not far from the Aguascalientes Museum where we stand, and begin taking private drawing lessons as a child. My progress enthuses instructors, and when I’m eighteen, two years after my father dies, they urge…
Read MoreKlimt Paints Gold
“Herr Klimt, you certainly prepare most thoroughly.” “Always, and especially for you, Frau Bloch-Bauer.” “How much longer will it take?” “Much of that depends on you, Madame. I believe I’ll need two hundred sketches and dozens of sittings. You don’t find your time with me unpleasant, I hope.” “On the contrary, I very much look…
Read MoreFamished Horse
This is more than a challenge. They want me to fail. That’s why they demanded: take Francisco Goitia’s dirty gold horse to your complex and make him a Triple Crown winner. Preposterous. The horse is several times three-years old and shows more ribs than a skeleton. When I introduce myself as the world’s greatest scientist,…
Read MoreImages of Death
Emiliano Zapata Dead handsome and authoritative he’s highlighted by grand mustache pointing at bloody chest amid men looking into camera 1919 Photograph from Archivo Casasila Cadaver of Pancho Villa not again will he extend both arms to earth as he hangs on his back over door of convertible Anonymous photo 1923 Poster Demonstration ghostly head…
Read MoreFirst Review of Paint it Blue
The first review of “Paint it Blue” has just been posted on Amazon.com, and I’m honored that painter and writer Peter Wood gave the book five stars. Here is the review: Most Helpful Customer Reviews 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars — Painters Exposed As Never Before!…
Read MoreElegant Quito Home of Maria Augusta Urrutia
I tell the taxi driver I’m looking for a splendid residence in downtown Quito, and he drives me into the historical center and to the home of Maria Augusta Urrutia. From outside, the house, though two tall stories, looks rather small and narrow, cramped by contiguous buildings, but upon entering I see a courtyard and…
Read MoreGarden Party for William H. Johnson
(A major feature about painter William H. Johnson, 1901-1970, will be posted later this spring.) I wish William H. Johnson, gifted painter of a unique world, were at this party honoring young African American artists, staged by the foundation bearing his name, at an elegant old two-story home near the Wilshire district in Los Angeles.…
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