I have been wanting to get my oldest friend, Drew Knapp, who now runs http://www.townzs.com/, to come over to my studio and look at my art and have dinner (truth is, I owed him dinner for a while).  I’ve known Drew since 1970, when we were both teenagers attending Cooper Union’s Saturday program; while we both have different visions about art (as all artists do) I’ve respected his opinion more than anyone else I’ve studied along with when it comes to art. 

And so, we had dinner last night but before that - I showed him the work I’ve done for the last 18 months and I have to say …. looking at work with another person is different than being alone with it - very different; so different that my work, and I, actually feel different looking at my work as it’s seen through another’s eyes.

The good news - Drew like these paintings

The rest of my work, he thought was superficial - and that was too stuck in trying to to get done in one sitting when work needed more - and that would be called layering.

He felt that if I just wanted to show up, be somewhere else than home, then it didn’t matter - but if I wanted to progress further I needed to go to the next level and make more of a commitment to my art, my process; that commitment didn’t need to be more time physically spent in the studio, but rather, a commitment to go further with my work,  to draw more - to work larger when work needed it - to go father with some of my work that I just started and to re-work some of my ealier stuff over the last 18 months.

I agreed, but I also noted how different it really is to see my own work for another’s eyes; that’s fine, that’s what I wanted - a real opinion by a good friend who I’ve known a very long time.

Now I have to decide if I’m ready to make that commitment.  I hope I am.