Posts in Art

Robert Longo: Creating Art From Dust

By the turn of the 21st century, Robert Longo was, as he puts it, sitting at the top of the junk pile.

He had once been a leading protagonist in the “Pictures Generation.” Alongside fellow artists like Cindy Sherman, Richard Prince, Louise Lawler and David Salle, he became one of the most collected, exhibited and talked about visionaries of the early 1980s, rising to prominence during the golden age of contemporary art through his “Men in the Cities” series, which depicted suited, dancing silhouettes drawn in charcoal.

But he was punished for it — and cast aside.

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The Lions Are Coming: Inaugural ‘U.S. Tusk Lion Trail’ Unleashes Pride Across East End

Earlier this summer, Deborra-Lee Furness welcomed a new guest into her East Hampton home with open arms and an open heart.

She and her son, Oscar Jackman, showered it with love, creativity and art — spending hours upon hours together, sometimes even late into the night.

But her husband, actor Hugh Jackman, wasn’t as enthused — considering the house guest was a slightly larger-than-life, resin, several-hundred-pound lion that Furness and her son painted and affectionately named “Ubuntu,” which translates from Zulu to mean, “I am because we are.”

“My art room is also a dance room, and because he’s preparing for a show, he had to tap around ‘Ubuntu.’ It wasn’t easy,” Furness said with a laugh. “He was quite happy to see ‘Ubuntu’ go on his way to his next journey.”

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Watercolorist Barbara Ernst Prey Comes Home In ‘Vanishing Point’

When weather and time allow, Barbara Ernst Prey packs her paints, canvas and easel into the back of her car, hops behind the steering wheel and drives due east from her home in Oyster Bay — a ritual that transports her back to her childhood, riding shotgun next to her mother.

They would stop at beach after beach off Montauk Highway, setting up their materials side by side, taking in the ocean, umbrellas, chairs, lighthouses and people. And here, with the sun shining and salty breeze blowing, the young girl learned how to “look.”

In time, she chose to express what she saw through watercolors, drawn to its lightness and translucency — a medium notoriously precarious and unforgiving of even the smallest mistake. But, even further, she was one of the few women to enter a male-dominated tradition, and then push its bounds.

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Finding Beauty in the Fire: ‘East End Collected6’ Endures Against Pandemic Backdrop

When Patrick J. Peters III picks up the phone last Friday afternoon, he is standing in front of an 80-square-foot canvas, staring at a cacophony of color — and, within it, two dichotomous dragons.

The first is black and red, greedy and fear-driven, overshadowed by the beast behind him. She, on the other hand, is vibrant and playful, her taloned hand plunged deep into her foe.

And, out of the struggle, comes energy and light.

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Photographer Renate Aller Captures the Spaces Between

Whether she’s watching a river of clouds snake through a mountain pass, or holding her breath as the sun breaks through a storm on the ocean horizon, Renate Aller has honed her ability to predict a moment — and only then does she click her shutter.

That split second, she says, is “the space between memory and expectation,” during which nothing inherently happens, but without which no change could occur.

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Grenning Finds Power in The Art of Morton

There is more to George Morton than his sheer, mostly raw talent. Take one look at his dramatically lifelike, poignant pieces, and it’s there — his past, one set against the drug war of the 1990s in Kansas City, one that landed him an 11-year prison sentence.

One that nearly destroyed him.

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Chalk and the Art of Letting Go with Kara Hoblin

Through chalk, Kara Hoblin learned one of the most important lessons that life has to offer: the necessity of letting go. As an artist, that means letting go of her work. As a lover, to let go of heartache. And as a human, to let go of loss, insecurity, hate and pain.

But it doesn’t mean throwing them away, she emphasizes. It simply means letting life be — while growing through the shadows and emerging into the light.

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