Went over to Jack Shainman’s gallery tonight for an opening of Jackie Nickerson’s photos of the Catholic religious orders of Ireland and Pierre Dorion’s Cabin Fever paintings. 

I spent some time talking to Jack Shainman about Pierre Dorion’s paintings which both attract and repulse me (I suppose that’s OK); they repulse me at first with the ordinariness of the subjects but the coloring is so well done, the paintings become attractive.

Tie, 2007, Oil on linen, 54 x 36 inches

Here’s the thing - sometimes artists can be so in love the idea of what they’re doing and thinking and want to share that with us - to make us see what they see; in order words, you must make an effort to understand what the painting is really about.

It’s the same thing as a website constructed around it’s owm internal brands and their termonology, the people within a business often think differently than a customer; instead of speaking in the customers’ voice, they want the customer to understand them.

In the same way, Pierre Dorion’s ask you to understand his language and values before opening up to  you and as you look at his work more often it does open up to me.  

However, the most successful artists speak the language of the customer and that’s what artists’ can often forget.  The reason Pierre Dorion’s paintings work for me are not because he is glorifying the ordinary - that might be important to him, but is meaningless to me and most other people.  

His paintings work because they are equisitely painted.

Jackie Nickerson’s photos were also good, but I’m not into Irish Nun’s and Priests - so there’s not much for me to day about Nickerson’s photos.