Terry Winters, Good Government

Good Government, 1984
Oil on linen
101 1/4 × 136 1/4 in
257.2 × 346.1 cm

What a perfect title for the past week of baloney in Washington D.C.

I’ve have a postcard of this work in my studio since first seeing it in probably 1993. I never tire of looking at Terry Winters work, but this remains my favorite. The postcard is now sun-faded beyond belief. I believe the original is part of the Whitney’s collection.

52 painters is a collection of artists I’ve been thinking about for a long time and want to talk about here. I have a love of Winters for his drawing of organic shapes and general charcoal use.

Here is his official site.

And his Beer with A Painter interview from 2015 which shows his humanity and I love in particular due to their discussion of above painting. Here is the excerpt for your viewing pleasure:

JS: Some of your paintings do have interesting and evocative titles, like the painting owned by the Whitney Museum: “Good Government” (1984).

TW: I was going to call it “Still life with Apples,” but no one would have believed me! The title is taken from Lorenzetti’s Allegory of Good and Bad Government. But “Good Government” was also a poster in my elementary school: a chart picturing everybody doing their daily chores and being good citizens. It was also a joke about a painting “working”—the delusion of a painting’s functional formal completion.

One more for the road:

 

 

 

 

 

52 Artists – Danica Phelps on gratitude

A moment to think about a new year and gratitude through the eyes of Danica Phelps various gratitude drawings.

About the project from the Danica Phelps Projects website:

I started this project in the Spring of 2016 while I was listening to stories of refugees from Syria while working in the studio.  I felt the plight of these people so powerfully, leaving a life of daily terror to travel hundreds and thousands of miles, carrying nothing while I am sitting in my warm studio with lip balm at my desk, by my bed and in my purse so that I have it wherever I need it.  I decided that I had to do something to try to help.  I used my own skills by making 41 drawings of simple things in life that I am grateful for.  Clean water to drink, seeds to plant food in the garden and water that comes out of a tap to water them, the constant presence of my son, the presence in my life that I am most grateful for.  These are a few of the drawings.  In the October of 2017, I started posting them every couple of days on Facebook to auction them to raise money for organizations that are helping these refugees.

More on The Gratitude Project.

To start this project of my own again from a grateful place is how I would like to begin.

This is the start of artists I like to think about is here too.