Accepting Grace
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Grace. Acrylic and Flashe on canvas. 74x62”. 2023. Part of current exhibition, Honey, Suckle, at Martine Chaisson.
“I seem to be getting more religious,” I admitted, in a recent artist’s talk.
Titles like Grace or Devotion would have made me shutter in my twenties. Yuck! Get a life! I can imagine saying to myself. Everything had to be cool. Zen. Obtuse and abstract. I had worked hard to push out the overwrought parts of myself.
Though I don’t subscribe to any religion, the older I get, the more I’m a believer. Everything is just too wonderful and bizarre and intense to be random and meaningless. And the more I believe, the more rich it all becomes.
I painted Grace in September, a month of total chaos. We were moving, Diego was traveling, my head was in a million places and my to-do lists were prodigious.
I made a commitment to myself, though, to be in my studio two hours a day, during the week. I could do anything that felt good, ideally wetting a paintbrush.
Grace was one of those rare paintings, where I knew what I wanted to paint and then did it. Nice and slow, step by step. I don’t take that for granted.
Completing an artistic thought, during weeks of chaos, is pretty special too.
Sweet Nino, lost in thought, in my studio.
Here’s the rest of my talk. Next time I’ll share a private walk-through of the show, and you can see all the pieces close-up.
Visiting New Orleans? Please stop by!
Honey, Suckle
Martine Chaisson Gallery
727 Camp St. New Orleans, LA
On view til late December!
You can also see the work on my website, which I’ve updated! Have a look, and tell me what you think.
And speaking of devotion, look at how Nino watches his big sister, Gioia.
