All That Glistens....stepping out of the regional

All That Glistens   oil/burlap/canvas/gold leaf   24 x 18 x 1.5

The bad news is that none of our children lives close by...so we don/t get to share time together on a weekly basis.  The good news is that we get to view art in galleries in major cities that are so very different than the regional art that we participate in  and view on a regular basis.  In this case...San Francisco.  Our last visit was comprised of a half a dozen galleries located in the downtown area.  The work yielded no surprises...it was all abstract, very very large and very very impersonal.  Designed to be impersonal.  The only commanding figurative works were in a series of photographic works taken of circus performers from Eastern Europe, I think.  While representational painters are often accused of working in a technique-driven box, abstractionists seem to work in another sort of box- line murmurations, squiggles and patches of bland hues ad nauseum.  My humble opinion, of course.  What I came away with, however, was the wonderful notion of possibility - simply anything goes!  I was inspired by patches of blue and white resembling a flow blue plate; fearlessness in the use of color; and, yes, works on burlap!  Carrying within them the knowledge of hard-won possibilities, these California works represented a great freedom to me.  I came away with new eyes.

"All That Glistens" is my post-holiday foray into a different world...one outside of my unusual regional recipe.