in an airport somewhere...

Thanks to Brent Williams, Collections Manager and Associate Preparator for the Muskegon Museum of Art in Muskegon Michigan, for sending this panorama shot of the current installation in the museum. In the foreground on the right is my painting Strange Progeny a promised gift to the MMA.

I'm reminded, on what is for many of us a rather disturbing day, of this song by Bruce Cockburn. It's from an album by the same title that was very important / formative for me as a young artist. And it is a helpful reminder that this is hardly the first time the United States has tilted towards fascism.

This past Thursday I was in Syracuse for a panel discussion with the five artists in "The Poetry of Content: Five Representational Artists" exhibition at the Syracuse University Art Galleries. The discussion was led by exhibition co-curator Jerome Witkin. The other co-curator David Prince introduced the panel discussion.

From the right: David Prince, Bill Murphy, Robert Birmelin, Jerome Witkin, Gillian Pederson-Krag, Joel Sheesley and myself.

You can watch video (actually it is broken into three videos) on the Syracuse University Galleries Facebook Page. www.facebook.com/SUArtGalleries/?fref=ts

Here is the video joined into one with the volume boosted. Pretty low quality image, but you can hear it better. www.youtube.com/watch?v=mkjOJ228y1s&feature=youtu.be

The Quilt - for Mother's Day!

My wife Sherrie just posted a beautiful piece she wrote after visiting her mother recently:

slowlysite.wordpress.com/2016/05/07/my-mom/

The picture here is of Sherrie, her mother Geraldine Rubingh, her sisters Darlene and Joy , also in the picture are Darlene's daughter Ann and her daughter (being held by her great-grandmother) and Darlene's son Matt's two daughters.

IMG_1632

This is a detail of the "face" side of the painting At 25 which Sherrie is dropping off at Calvin College in Michigan tomorrow. It will be in an exhibition at Calvin titled 50/50. In honor of the Calvin College Department of Art & Art History’s 50th anniversary, the Center Art Gallery will be hosting this exhibition that includes 50 works by 50 art alumni. Exhibition Dates: September 8 – October 10, 2015

This painting / project was made in 2010 as a kind of commemoration of 25 years of working with my daughter Temma as a subject – and to the extent that one can speak of her being so, as a collaborator - in my art. The piece composed of 25 sections, each of which is painted by one or two artists from around the world. You can read much more about this work and see various images related to it's production here: www.flickr.com/photos/timlowly/sets/72157624283267811

A) "The United States now accounts for less than 5 percent of the world’s inhabitants—and about 25 percent of its incarcerated inhabitants."

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B) "African-American men comprise a mere 6% of the American population, but according to the Department of Justice, they make up nearly half of the 2 million inmates in U.S. jails or prisons."

= African-American men make up over 10 percent of the entire world's incarcerated inhabitants. These are mind boggling and deeply troubling statistics. "Home of the free"? For whom?

referenced in title: Glenn Ligon

Recently my friend Karl Clifton-Soderstrom, who is a professor of philosophy at North Park University (where I also teach) invited me to come to his office for a conversation on art. Well, more like a meandering monologue that he caught on video (see link below). My painting Dear Protagonist, (a reverie regarding you in the perpetual present) is hanging out in Karl's office and at one point in the video I talk about that painting specifically. Incidentally I like the way Karl edited this so that it is seemingly an never-ending looping rumination. Because it is.

You can watch the video here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=eI6ibLU1dnc

tdl hand (while being painted)

press L

Kathleen Mercado has a gift...well more than one.

Many of you certainly know Kathleen as a generous commentator on your work. When she looks she thinks and her thoughts open doors. I could put a wonderful little book together from comments she has made on my work.

Her photography is what caught us at first, although I suspect that her art as a dancer is what got the ball rolling. But I want to speak a bit about her most recent venture: into painting. It is quite unusual (in my experience of teaching and looking at art) to see someone start painting and "be there" almost immediately. Some might mistakenly regard what KM is doing in painting as "naive", but in my view she is getting at the heart of things with her mystical little (I'm not really sure about the sizes in general) works.

One such painting lives with us now. You can see it in color here.

A sneak peek at a detail of one of the 14 small drawings that constitute a project that will be shown at Redeemer University College in Ontario, Canada February 8 to March 28, 2018. I am planning on being there for a talk towards the end of the exhibition.

www.redeemer.ca/events/anothers-world/

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"The Stalker's Daughter", 2017, acrylic on panel, 11.5" x 15"

This was the first of the Re. Rainbow Girl project paintings that I started, but I set it aside and it was among the last that I finished.

With this painting the artist that comes to mind is Caravaggio, but the clearest parallel in his work seems to be–at least as far as the gesture of the head–his painting "Sacrifice of Isaac”. But, while there is a similarity to the position of the head of the terrified Isaac, the notion of sacrifice seems problematic. A clearer connection for me is to the 20th c. Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The title of the painting alludes to Tarkovsky’s film “Stalker”, specifically to the daughter of the main character, the “Stalker”: a man who is a kind of guide who leads people into a place called “the Zone” where, supposedly, their greatest desire will be realized. The Stalker’s daughter is disabled, and apparently a minor character in the film. That apparent marginality of her role (and implicitly her place in the world) is put into question by the final scene of the film. In that scene, from across a tabletop we see her sitting alone at a table,

reciting the poem "I Love Your Dear Eyes..." by Fedor Tyutchev:

I love your dear eyes, my friend,

With their play so bright and wondrous,

When you promptly rise them, and,

Like with a lightning in the wildness,

Embrace at once the whole land.

The dusk and gloomy flame of passion.

Upon finishing the poem, she turns her head towards the camera and unexpectedly directs the cups on the table to slide towards us across the table. When the third cup reaches the

edge of the table, it falls to the floor, and the Stalker’s daughter puts her head on the table as a train passing in close proximity (joined by strains of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”) shakes the room.

Via that final scene of "Stalker" I’m reminded of another painting by Caravaggio: the "Supper at Emmaus". In that painting we view–similarly, from across a table–another revelational event:

the moment the true identity of the host becomes evident. All that said: while Temma’s head in my painting echoes the position of the head of the Stalker’s daughter and while the light on

her hair and the side of her face seem uttery revelatory, in the painting Temma’s face falls into obscurity in dark shadow. The painting tilts back towards mystery.