"Presidio #34 (Blue Table)," 2025
The latest Presidio painting and an artist talk in San Francisco
I’ll be giving a brief talk tomorrow, Friday, April 25, 12:30pm at 425 Market Street in San Francisco where my giant paintings are on view through the end of May.
Even though the exhibition is titled, “Giant Paintings from New England, California and Newfoundland” there are several small paintings included. There’s been a great response to the show and I’m happy to see a few people at the building tomorrow. 425 Market Street is a skyscraper and the show can be viewed any hour of the day, any day of the week. It’s best to enter on Fremont Street. The restaurant, Barcha, next door to my exhibit is excellent.
Below is a new Presidio painting.
Maybe I’ll bring this painting to Paris for my exhibit at Galerie Mercier, May 20-24, 2025. I’ll be there at the gallery, Thursday, May 22. The painting above is very much a collage of different moments, different places. I tried putting in a red table that I had seen on Cape Cod but it didn’t work right. The red was barely dry when I massed in the blue, consciously placing the blue table more forward, right up against the picture plane as flat as possible. Yet even I want the table to become three dimensional as it pulls all of the attention away from the bridge very consciously cropped on the right. I’m still extremely interested in the views at the Presidio and the way that the Golden Gate Bridge is different each time I see it, each time I go to the city or The Presidio. When I’m there it feels very welcoming and familiar since I grew up on Army posts. My father was an Army Chaplain and he made a trip to The Presidio in 1978 around the time I started painting as a teenager at Staten Island Academy. I like thinking about these things when I’m working.
Below is an earlier Presidio painting that I made in my son’s apartment in Paris a few years ago. It’s the painting that Donald Kuspit writes about when he reviewed my 2023 Palo Alto exhibition. The painting will be on the cover of the Nob Hill Gazette in May and it belongs to Megan and Harris Barton. I used a loaded brush of a very specific light gray-blue to paint the “water” and I wanted to drag the paint in a way that I rarely used up to that point. It was fascinating that Kuspit picked up on the dangerous approach to the water - right on the edge of kitsch.
NEWS
“Giant Paintings from New England, California and Newfoundland” will be on view at 425 Market Street in San Francisco, March 17-May, 30, 2025.
Upcoming exhibition “Small Paintings” at Galerie Mercier, Paris, May 20-24, 2025.
Group show at The Glass House Fundraiser in New Canaan in June.
Group show at Cape Cod Museum of Art in Dennis, MA in July.
September solo exhibition at Truro Center for the Arts, Truro, MA.
Click here to see all of the new notecards including Paris, San Francisco, Amalfi, Newfoundland, Race Point, North Truro, Maine.
Notecards are also available in person at Explore Booksellers in Aspen, Keplers Books in Menlo Park, Provincetown Art Association and Museum, SFMOMA, University Art In Redwood City, Book Passage in San Francisco and Corte Madera and The Cape Cod Museum of Art.