Art, Poetry & Essays • But not necessarily in that order.
Stopping to look at an Agnes Martin painting can feel like stopping to look at wallpaper. Her paintings typically have soft warm bands of color arranged in symmetrical patterns or delicately drawn lines in a grid. But to dismiss her work as simplistic or decorative would be a mistake. An abstract painting like hers has […]
Monarch butterflies take an awe inspiring journey from southern Canada to central Mexico every year. On this epic 3,000 mile adventure, these beautiful, gem like creatures flit softly through our neighborhoods, parks, and backyards. But according to the 2018 Western Monarch Thanksgiving Count, the number of western monarchs dropped 86% over the previous year. According […]
Unlike Wassily Kandinsky’s Concerning the Spiritual in Art or Ben Shahn’s The Shape of Content, Mark Rothko’s own writing The Artist’s Reality wasn’t published during his lifetime. The book had remained merely a rumor among his friends and family until it was discovered by accident. Christopher Rothko has done a great service to the art […]
Rothko: The Color Field Paintings comes as close as one can to providing a quiet place to regularly meditate with Mark Rothko’s work. Unlike many art books, Christopher Rothko, Mark Rothko’s son, has wisely chosen to let the art speak for itself without volumes and volumes of text. The two introductory essays, one by Christopher […]
This book is for people who want to be a student of Mark Rothko’s life and work. If you’re not committed to immersing yourself in his letters, random notes, and the editor’s attempts to make sense of Rothko’s scribbles, then you will be disappointed with this book. If you’re interested in hearing Rothko in his […]