Was at a private art opening of Laurent Dauptain tonight and had a really nice time meeting with the publicist and artist.

One of the things that strikes me in doing figurative work is that it is very hard to be original and fresh, especially with so many hundreds of years of portraits both seen and unseen.

Laurent managed to keep his work fresh and interesting when it could just as easily not been.

I felt really good being in frount of his work even as I wondered if anything might still be missing. Sipping some wine I flashed back to all the times I painted the familar and got stuck.

Usually I could work through bordum… But Laurant seems to have bypassed bordum all together – making his Paris street scenes look familar, yet fresh, new brushstrokes.

The self portraits bespeak someone who wanted a model, couldn’t find one, and chose himself, over and over.

Even as I stood there, sipping red wine, talking a nice publicist who was facinated with social media, I saw a painting being sold right before my eyes – it was a self portrait.

Laurent Dauptain’s show will run through May 29th
Axelle Fine Arts Galerie
535 W 25th St

A few months ago I did a post on New York Art when Sea Levels rise and mentioned MOMA’s show Rising Currents which is now showing.   Last night I was at the Museum of Modern Art and stumbled onto Rising Currents – turned out the it was near closing time but I managed to get a few minutes of this show on video as I walked around it.

As  I mentioned – the historical importance of this Rising Current show is probably not fully recognized now – but it’s one of the first truly relevant shows I’ve seen a modern museum, or for that matter, any museum put on lately.

I intended to go to a different event but thanks to the power of Social Media and FourSquare specifically – I ended up at the TASCHEN store in soho for the Roadside America booksigning – didn’t meet John Margolies, sorry to say.

I really enjoyed looking at John Margolies photo, they must have been taken right from the road, and over the last 25 years.

The book has 400 color photos of main street signs, gas stations, movie theaters, etc – all of it is captivating, and I found myself chuckling quite a lot as I looked, and looked … The drink I was given helped too.

Was thinking how different TACHEN is from PHIDON, they’re both art bookstores and located nearby each other.

Last week I was on the other side of the pond, spending 3 days in London, then traveling to Bath for a day (went to Stonehenge and Laycock on a tour), then off to Torquey and Exeter last weekend (with a visit to Cockington Manner in Torquey, along with a lot of local color that I took videos and photos of).

Figured I post some of what I saw – was sorry to miss John Evens, who actually publishes this New York City Art Blog (in Exeter, no less!) but we can only play with the cards we have – and I happened to be in Exeter on Easter Weekend, which included a  bank holiday – getting together with people you don’t often see (or not ever met) is often harder on bank holidays than other times.

Still I wanted to capture some of the local flavor of my very successful trip last week here.

The first two videos are the last I took – me and a few friends in a balloon above the bay of Torquay exactly a week ago.

The next video is the River Avon in Bath, UK, as I was passing over it – I got something in my eye that stopped me from filming more of it but like what I captured anyway.

I found Bath to be a nice place to stay and I wish I had more time there – well, maybe next trip – who knows.

The next 3 videos are  of  my trip to Stonehenge – which was quite special- see for yourself – but the sound is choppy as the wind was hitting my iphone and making it hard to hear what I was saying – it was special visiting this sacred place.

I will have more videos to put up shortly and I haven’t yet seen the footage from my conference sessions at Monitoring Social Media Bootcamp in London earlier last week – plus videos and pictures of Big Ben, the Tate, various other places I visited and things I was doing in Exeter and Torquay – I’ll get to that in a few days at time permits.