Philip Guston

Philip Guston

Five reasons why I like Philip Guston's "klansmen" paintings:
1. subverts the image of the KKK, makes it comical (albeit unsettling)
2. imagining yourself as the "bad guy" is an interesting exercise, encourages understanding, empathy
3. each object has a weight (visual weight)
4. I like the idea that each of his symbols are like tools to make a painting, much like how Morandi used his bottles
5. warm palette, hazy pink. Like looking at the world through bloodshot eyes

Bad Habits

City Limits

Studio

Zadie Smith

Reading Zadie Smith's "NW" makes me feel alive. It inspires me to paint my reality. Not to worry about the pretentions of Painting. To make paintings of my secret moments. My silence. My fears. My joys. The objects around me. Who I want to be. Who I am. Who I was. Where I am. Less imagining, more image-ing. The rest will sort itself out over time. Be patient. Be thorough. Be alive, in the body. Closer to my own truth/perception of reality/life/mortality. What it is to be Pete.

Willem de Kooning

Five reasons why I like Willem de Kooning's landscape paintings:
1. his strokes seem so packed with energy that you can even feel it when looking at a printed reproduction.
2. they are unashamedly (?) painterly.
3. they evoke a sense of 1950s New York, jazz, bohemia.
4. they speak of freedom and also of anxiety.
5. they act as a touchstone from which I can push off.

Willem de Kooning

Door to the River

Merritt Parkway

A Tree in Naples

Project 3 results!

Excuse the lame google docs view, but it's all I've got for now. Enjoi! :D