"Homage to Frank", oil on linen. 30" x 40", by Leslie Watkins ©2012

The American Impressionist painter Frank Vincent DuMond (1865 -1951) developed the Prismatic Palette as an aid to instruct his landscape students. One of them, Frank Mason, claimed he had "perfect pitch," meaning that his sense of tonal value was so acute that he could perfectly "pitch" a painting. Mason further developed the palette and taught various mixing combinations. Using the Green Mountains of Vermont as his backdrop to illustrate the changing qualities of light in his plein air classes, Mason taught the Prismatic Palette to hundreds of his own students. I was one of them. (see essay)

Art Review: Everett Raymond Kinstler at            the Norman Rockwell Museum By Raymond J. Steiner …The cold impartial Tempus fugit hardly allows us the same impact that Kinstler’s portraits can deliver…and the simple reason is that Kinstler’s genius lies in his uncanny abilities to render a verisimilitude through the magic of his brush. It’s more than this, of course. It’s also his talent of seeing. Kinstler is nothing if not a keen observer of life — he sees not only the visage but also the character, the unique and miniscule differences in this eye, that chin. The pulp character not only shows his courage (or her vulnerability) in his/her face, but also in the nuanced body movement, stance, setting of shoulders and head. Likewise, the living man/woman gives Kinstler not only a likeness, but a sense of “who-ness” as well. In this respect, it is fitting that he should be given a retrospective in — well, Norman Rockwell’s backyard if not his home. …(see essay) Tony Bennett, by Everett Raymond Kinstler, 2006. Oil on canvas. 24" x 36". Collection of the artist. ©2006 Everett Raymond Kinstler. All rights reserved.

(L to R) Elayne Seaman, Mildred Cohen, Nancy Scott at the LongReach 30 year Celebration Exhibit.

I went to LongReach Arts 30th Anniversary celebration and it was an exciting and heartwarming event as I have been going to their openings since we began ART TIMES in 1984. So many artists that I have known over the past 28 years were there celebrating this group. LongReach, first known as Summergroup, began in the spring of 1982 when a group of professional visual artists, most of whom had been showing at Elayne Seaman’s gallery in Poughkeepsie, met to explore the idea of forming a cooperative gallery when Elayne decided to close the gallery. (see essay)

IT IS THE sheer, unstoppable force of it that sometimes stops me in my tracks. No matter your personal tastes, beliefs or opinions, the creative urge simply cannot be halted. There are some who believe that we are “hard-wired”, that we’ve been “homo aestheticus”for as long as we’ve been “erectus” — and almost certainly before we became “sapient”. Maybe so — the facts seem to support that early man was scratching images on flat surfaces long before he learned to speak or write. And who know how much older the propensity to make “music” and “dancing movements” might be?…… (See essay)

Madeline Deavenport, Kelsey Coventry, Victoria North in Dwindle photo: Matthew Murphy

Spring – the renewal time when hope blooms anew along with flowers and the graduation performances of young dance students. It’s the time of year when many dance schools have end of year performances to show off the accomplishments of their students. For example, New York Theatre Ballet's Ballet School NY will have their recital on June 9 at 4 pm at The Miller Theater at Columbia University, Broadway at 116th Street. (see essay)

The sequel to Tom Six’s 2010 horror film, “The Human Centipede (First Sequence)”, went into American theater release a few months ago.  Titled “The Human Centipede (Full Sequence)” it has fared better on our shores than it did in Britain where it cannot be legally shown or sold. So OK, some minor editing was required before being offered here — even serious torture porn may need a little tasteful touching up now and then.  The central feature of this Dutch filmmakers movies is stitching together of human subjects, end to end—three in the first, eight in the second. ……(See essay)

…… The irony is that all sides of the triangle want, ultimately, the same thing: certainty. The audience wants to feel certain they will enjoy the show. That’s not possible. The critics want to feel certain their opinions are right and will be the dominant influence on the public. That’s not possible. The artists want to feel certain their work is good. That’s not possible either.
So, what do we want from reviews? Something we cannot reliably get. The process of creating, experiencing, and judging esthetic experiences is a perfect tangle of constantly shifting breezes, blowing any way they want to, any time they want to, regardless of anything we think, or want, or do. It has always been so; it will always be so. We’d better make up our minds to like it. (See essay)

Farce is supposed to be unfeeling. We laugh at, not sympathize with, the shrew Kate’s suffering at the hands of her new husband. (Or at least Shakespeare’s audience did.) We laugh at, not sympathize with, Dr. Bartolo’s losing his intended bride Rosina to the Count Almaviva in “The Barber of Seville.” And if the actor is good enough to make one sympathize, the audience can always say, “Well, he got what was coming to him through his own fault.”…(see essay)