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.

I met Alan Peckolick at his openings at Atlantic and ArtSpace Galleries both on West 29th Street (in the same building) and had a much better time than I expected.  Was busy trying to finish up some work as I have Jury Duty to do in Kings County on Wednesday and found one show - his, that was right down the block;  a couple of conversations and glasses of wine later, here I am.

 Checker 30 x 40 acrylic on canvas  by Alan Peckolick

Besides enjoying the lettering and font work - the colors were wonderful and had real feeling - the kind of stuff that painting, for me, is made for.   I asked Alan a few questions and got back a couple of answers that I’ll briefly go into here.

Alan Peckolick has been a graphic designer for some time, but reinvented himself into a painter, and a fine one.  Alan distinguishes graphic design/illustration as solving someone else’s problem while painting is solving your own (the artist’s) problem.  Interesting.

There’s a lot of layering, the paintings were done in acrylic and all by hand; Alan started with photographs 95% of the time when he first began painting in 1998 or 1999 (don’t remember for sure which year it was).  Now, Alan Peckolick uses photos 5% of the time and imagination for the rest.

When is a painting done?  When he can’t think of anything else to do in the painting.  Alan said he’s selling his work because he’s running out of room in his studio to store the paintings  - and, it appears several of his paintings were already sold when I arrived to his openings at Atlantic Gallery and ArtSpace Gallery.

There were several admirers of Peckolick present and while the galleries were not crowded when I arrived, I sensed that there were serious art lovers among those present and I spoke to a few of them - that’s how I know for sure.

I notice that Peckolick’s paintings are “finished”; every part is worked to a certain level - much as I feel I treat my own work - it’s more a state of mine really.   Like I said, I enjoyed looking at Alan Peckolick’s paintings and speaking both to the artist, his gallery dealers and several of those who attended the openings.

I painted this study today, as well as another, a self portrait against Mont Saint Victoire.  I wasn’t able to resolve the portrait, so I didn’t try to finish it.

Spent most of this week in Washington DC at the Emetrics Summit and only got back early Friday morning.

The nude study above was of a Colombia University graduate student majoring in Psychology; actually, I was able to research the model first and then decided to paint her, before coming over to the Brooklyn Artists Gym today.

I also attended an opening of Rick Dragon at BAG, which also happens to be a friend of Drew Knapp (Drew is my oldest friend, someone I’ve known since 1970).