Chelsea 4 - Nicole Klagsbrun Gallery

While I didn't have much of a look at Harpaz's work, and none at all of Hollingsworth's, I did have a lovely time chatting with Erin and Ruth at this gallery and got turned on to the work of these two artists.
Alona Harpaz


Dennis Hollingsworth

Chelsea 3 - Mickalene Thomas & Shinique Smith

at Caren Golden Fine Art

Chelsea 2 - Frank Bowling

at G.R. N'Namdi Gallery

Chelsea 1 - Gary Bandy

at Charles Cowles Gallery
Paint and printed digital images of the painting re-attached.

I've not got anything. I've got a lot of nothing. The Studio is freezing.

photo by Jesse Proudfoot, 1998

Before I Was A Painter

There wasn't one painting or drawing in my application to school.
In 1996, a year before art school and few minutes after half-reading "Discipline and Punish", I adopted the name Panopticon and began sending mail art to anyone who would give me their address. I was really into Throbbing Gristle and mail art worked so well with all the industrial noise music I was making. It started as cards with photocopied images on the front and a two or three word message inside, and culminated with me sending out nearly 40 of the baggy/razor blade/tag combinations shown above.
People really didn't think about privacy the same way as they might now, and no one remembers giving out their address. So I had a few people worried, and one even drove past my house(I'd listed a return address in hopes of anyone reciprocating, no one ever did).

Later, a second project came up where I put a bit of water in with the blades so they would rust during delivery. One night on mushrooms at a movie theatre I remember pulling out a pack of rusted razor blades from my pocket in plain view of some folks I didn't know so well.

Thanks so much to Joel Jackson and Heather Kvill for sending these photos. I had to blur the address because my mom still lives there.

New Painting: Pour Quatorze

pourquatorze, originally uploaded by Wil Murray.

Pour Quatorze, 2007
22" X 24"

Danger. If The Panto Boys Are Out There.

Now that I am a safety-loving artist in the studio, wearing a mask all the time and replacing the cartridges regularly, the dangers await when I leave the studio.
I am likely to be hit by a car walking home from the studio each night. Only six or seven blocks away, and only one busy street to cross.
The problem is that while I am walking across the street, I am tracking all the possible outcomes as they present themselves. Estimating their possible outcomes while simultaneously trying to gauge their duration and end point, and playing for time for my hand to step in and stop it all.
Grand strategy for painting, not so grand when jaywalking. Forgetting to value getting across the street safely, oncoming traffic is read not as an immediate danger, only as something in play.
Horns blaring as the cars whizz past.
This makes conversation with unexpected folks on the street impossible too.
The only thing that it reminds me of is when I was speeding, I would spend a lot of time in malls. Passing the ubiquitous glass partitions that separate shoppers in malls from three story drops, i would recognize a fear of falling with relative removal. Some note posted internally and distant telling me to be careful not to fall, or maybe just to count dropping to my death as something in play.