My most recent show, “Emerging Artists 2012″, closes tonight at the Driftwood Salon in San Francisco. I was super lucky to be a part of the exhibition. The owners of the gallery, Camille Ochoa and Anthony Macias, searched through a ton of artists’ work from all around the bay before deciding on the final twelve. I always have such a sense of relief when I make a cut like that. The show was beautifully hung, well curated, and the opening was very well-attended and a lot of fun.

Camille and Anthony have done something really wonderful with Driftwood Salon. Artists themselves, they have created a space in which every artist would love to show. The physical space is gorgeous – in an alley on the edge of SoMA and the Mission – the ceilings soar and the lighting is great. Their own studio occupies part of the building, and they offer up the rest to gallery space. The gallery has an energetic feel to it, partly because of it’s location, and partly due to the energy put into it by the owners. On top of being geniunely nice people, Camille and Anthony are on the ball and patient with their artists. They make it easy to show with them.

Their next show, “Breaking Time”, opens March 2nd. I’m excited to see their future shows and the future of Driftwood Salon.

http://www.driftwoodsalon.com/

The artists in the exhibition with me were: Kate Daly, Hugo Kobayashi, Alberto Ybarra, Irene Hernandez, Solongo Tseekuu, Kevin Pincus, Ryan Jones Beatrice Hunt, Bern Rauch, Ytaelena Lopez, and Paul Morin

Hung Liu, "Migration Immigration"

I went to Hung Liu’s lecture at the Berkeley Art Center last Thursday. It was a fabulous lecture covering her whole career from a propaganda painter for Mao to a world renowned artist. Her paintings are gorgeous memorials to everyday Chinese and Chinese American people. She mines photographs (often photographs which were meant to be destroyed in the Cultural Revolution) for images of the working class, then monumentalizes their image on large canvases. Embedded in the paintings are traditional Chinese iconographies – the crane, the lotus flower, the circle. The artist simultaneously creates and destroys the image with thinly layered drips of paint that wash out parts of the image. The viewer can see that the root of her paintings is still in the style of Maoist propaganda, but Hung Liu has reclaimed the subject matter for herself.

Her paintings visually collapse history with a balance of ambiguity and technical perfection that leave you always wanting more. She will have a retrospective at The Oakland Museum in 2013.

Paul Mullins, Weak Knees

You only have until Dec. 17 to catch Paul Mullins’ show at Marx and Zavattero. He paints in the tradition of macho painting in his show, For Here or To Go.  Walking into his show is like wandering into a hick bar. There are several paintings of inner lip tattoos, paintings of male crotches (in bleached jeans), a large painting of a woman leaning in for a big smooch. Overlaid on many of the paintings are small collages and drawings that look like what might be carved on a bathroom wall.

Mr. Mullins is, sigh, my favorite kind of painter. His subject matter is so confrontational, yet his palette is so restrained, his work is painterly, and he leaves white space for the viewer’s eye to breath. He uses this shift in surface that is so fantastic that it makes me smile big. He paints his difficult subject matter beautifully.

Make sure you see his show so you can swoon, too.

Thread Painting 2011-1, 2011 48 × 40-5/8 inches

I went to Hadi’s opening on Thursday… a totally sublime show, but from him I would expect nothing less. His work is a beautiful attempt at perfection. Using a fully stripped down color palette of black, gray, and white, he uses dark gray panels with a tiny lip to tightly suspend many individual threads a breath above the panel.  Then he paints part of some of the  threads black so that cumulatively one sees through them to the panel below. The play on positive and negative space and the perfect craftsmanship is both immersive and meditative.

In all his perfection, though, I wonder if perhaps Hadi knows his medium too well. I wonder what would happen if he pushed the medium until it began to fall apart — a thread out of place, the slightly imperfect line or shape. The desire for perfection and calm is always hovering in our minds’ eye. It is in the imperfect hand that conveys humanity. The only visible imperfection in Hadi’s work is in the fuzziness of the thread. I wonder if he had a choice, would he eliminate that, too? I hope not.

Hadi’s show is up through December 23^rd.

Last Friday night I went down to Jamie Brunson’s opening at the Triton Museum. I was so happy to see her have a show at the Triton. It is a perfect space for her, an expansive space in which to hold her expansive paintings. Standing in front of one of her paintings, one is aware that the physical space of the painting in no way contains the mental, emotional, and spiritual space. They are the infinite pause in between breaths.

Jamie’s show is called “Indra’s Net”, a reference to the kundalini yoga practice from which her paintings arise. They are deeply intuitive paintings. The emotional pull of the insistent horizontal lines of her “Lattice” series; the all encompassing color and texture of her “Veil” paintings, and the subtle persistence of her iconic patterning, these are all marks made from intuition. And yet she doesn’t let her self get in the way. These are selfless paintings. Through the hauntingly beautiful subtle color shifts and the gorgeous surface (oh, that perfect surface!), Jamie generously steps wide and invites the viewer to experience what is so clearly bigger than herself. How lucky we are.

Jamie Brunson will be showing at the Triton Museum through Nov. 20.

Blue Band

Mel’s class has ended. Usually, when her classes end, I have her next class to look forward to. Not this time, though. She has cut me off. It’s time; I understand. I’ve been taking her painting classes for far too long. It is time for me to move on and apply for grad school. There are so many other great teachers in the  Bay Area. I hope I get into a school and get the chance to take from some of them. The art programs in the Bay Area are terribly competitive.

Some people in my life are advising me to not to go to graduate school… to do it on my own. But I think in general the art world is finicky about it’s rules, one of them being that getting into top galleries means you probably have your MFA. Jamie says it’s like finishing school for artists. You may go in accomplished, but you will come out polished. I’m excited to apply.

Today I had a surprise visit from my old college teacher, Hardy Hanson. He brought me two gray litho stones and an afternoon of his time. Hardy was  instrumental in teaching me how to paint. It’s his voice that I hear in the back of my head when I paint. He was the one who taught me that light destroys form, a central tenant in my work.

Hardy  reminded me to slow down in my work. Sometimes I paint so quickly because it feels like I have so much to paint out of myself. But painting quickly just leads to impatience with my work. He also reminded me to approach my work with humility, and to follow every intuitive tug. Don’t worry about the fickle nature of the art world. Just paint because I love to paint.

His opinion is that I not go to grad school. I’m already on my path, he said. The answer is not in the schooling but in the painting itself. I don’t know if I have the courage to test this reality. I’ve got 5 more months to think about it.

My time is up at Mel’s studio, and I never did own the space. It was always hers. But I did enjoy painting there. I got five paintings done in the 6 weeks, which seems like alot, but it is not for me. I should’ve worked harder.

I will not be moving back to my tiny studio, but instead I have moved to a bigger studio in Berkeley. I am always moving studios. I’m always finding something wrong with each studio… cockroaches or mice or the size of the studio. But I think the true reason I move studios is because painting is hard, and I think it will be easier somewhere else. It’s not just difficult, of course, but difficult and lovely.

My plan is to stay put for awhile. Mel called it a magic building. And it’s true because Hadi is there now and the Bay Area Figuratives used to paint there. And anything does seem possible.

"Philo" by Wynne Hayakawa

"Lemon's End No. 2" by Ferdinanda Florence

Last week I went to an interesting opening at Andrea Schwartz. Wynne Hayakawa is paired with Ferdinanda Florence in a satisfying show. I was already familiar with Wynne’s works, but Ferdinanda is new to me. Both painters deal with archetypes. Wynne deals with an archetype from the natural world, the coastal cypress tree, while Ferdinanda deals with an archetype from the industrial world, nameless concrete buildings.

The viewpoint of Wynne’s works is up in the trees; we have left the ground. We can feel the trees’ towering presence as the tree branches extend beyond the picture plane. Looking at her works, one can feel the shifts in emotion as one sees the light moving through the trees. The colors are gorgeous. Her palette is full of teals and corals and light blues, both running into and pushing against one another. Her surface shifts as well,  including everything from thin washes to impasto brushstrokes. It is a testament of how well Wynne paints that she can handle her constant shift in color, line, light, and emotion.

On the more angsty end of the spectrum are Ferdinanda’s paintings.  Her concrete buildings have a looming, slightly threatening presence. She uses a largely monochromatic gray palette. Even when there is a break in the palette – a reddish roof for instance – that break serves to reinforce the dominant palette because the color has so much gray in it. It is an artificial environment, but it has its’ own beauty. The gray planes in space, piled upon and next to each other, are beautiful in their austerity. The slightly blurred perspective is heady. But one always feels on edge when looking at these paintings.

It is an interesting pairing, and one that I would like to see again in the future. Their show is up through July.

Tonight I am holding my breath and anticipating; tomorrow I get to go to the studio. I don’t get to go to the studio on the weekend because I have too many childcare duties. Sometimes I’m just wiped out come Sunday night, but tonight my hands feel itchy to paint.

Tomorrow I will drive fast fast over the Bay Bridge, hurtling through fog and sunshine. The studio I’m subletting is guaranteed to be cold and bright. I will put on music to keep my doubts and bad thoughts away. And I will have to have every faith when I put brush to board. It is the feel of the paint between the two that is totally sublime.

Tonight my head is full of the practice of art. Tomorrow will be a good painting day.