One thing I love about painting at the Brooklyn Artists Gym is the community of artists - it makes a difference.  I was speaking to a friend this weekend that used to paint here and went off to her own studio space in Dumbo and people are much less sociable in her new space.

At BAG, it’s easy to talk with people and one person I’ve spoken to several times is Geoffrey Raymond - who does a lot of “Political” paintings - and here’s the latest one, The Annotated Elliot Spitzer (below) - it’s pretty big - and I wrote something on the painting (and so did 300 other people - that’s why it’s “annotated”.

 

The Annotated Spitzer - by Geoffrey Raymond - 2008 - Acrylic on Canvas (it’s big - don’t have the exact dimensions).

Geoffrey Raymond has a blog called the Year of Magical Painting and the blog looks very interesting.  Geoffrey has a post on the Spitzer Timeline that pertains to the painting of our dear evicted ex-governor, above (he’s even wearing socks - but you can’t see them) - ha - had fun with that one.

I know earlier last year Geoffrey got his portrait of Rupert Murdoch published and the painting sold for several thousand dollars - I think Geoffrey Raymond would like to sell this one too.

Maybe I should put the best thing this week first - another self portrait I did today at my studio - like I’ve said before - every time I want to throw in the towel - I manage to do something that surprises me. I do think I’m running out of certain colors though - and a thought went through my head while painting this - it goes like this:

“What’s important in Art is inventing your own language”.

“Learning how to paint like someone else is not that important and you can only go so far coping someone else’s recipes”.

Marshall Sponder - Self Portrait - Standing - 18″ x 36″ Oil Pastel on Canvas Paper, 2008

I spent somewhere between 5-6 hours on this piece - thought about tying together some of the larger abstracts I’ve been doing and the figurative work I’ve also been doing.

Oh, by the way, I went back the the Metropolitan last night with a friend, Janice, who used to paint over at my studio and has since left to paint in her own studio in Dumbo - we viewed the Poussin show and the Courbet show and had a pretty good time - it’s rare that I can go to museum with another painter and even rarer that I have a good time.

I did a painting today - had some names in mind but decided to leave it unnamed and think of it as a healing painting.

I didn’t try to mask it, as I usually do, so you can see it just as I see it.

Also thinking of last night at the Met, I viewed a Goya and a David painting that were no longer considered such - but still enjoyed the paintings. I wondered if knowing the paintings were not longer considered to be by the artist made a real difference in how people view the works.