Barbara Mink

Thank you Tom Schickel, Ithaca architect, for the roles of old drawings and elevations I plan to use in my next series. Not quite sure how yet, but I think I'll develop them side-by-side with "looking East" series, inspired by Chinese landscapes on raw canvas. For the architecture underlay I'll go back to primed canvas and a technique I learned with Carolyn Fellman a few years ago, incorporating paper underlay with painting on top. Excited.

I haven't been painting for the last few months, too busy with parental care in Buffalo and son health worry in Los Angeles, to say nothing of teaching. But I feel like trying to incorporate some architectural designs into a new piece. A number of years ago I used photos as part of a painting; want to see what overlaying a basis of diagrams with my minimalist approach feels like. 

 It's funny how inspiration works. When I visited the Helen Frankenthaler exhibit at Knoedler in NYC two years ago, I started on my experiment with raw canvas and linen, with the differentiating feature of line and a subdued palette. A few months ago I spent a long time in the Asian galleries at the Metropolitan Museum, and had a similar call to shift direction. I felt the urge to explore my long-standing admiration for Chinese and Japanese landscapes and calligraphy. Abstraction, restraint, and structure I think this is the beginning of a very pleasurable journey.

About to hang new show at Fineline Bistro on State Street. Great restaurant, hanging space. Some new small pieces, some from Timelines; all on raw canvas. Need to figure out what goes with steak and frites...

One of my students did a presentation about this new picture-sharing tool, then two art colleagues touted it. After some skepticismm I jumped on board, and am happy to say it's pretty darned fun. Easy to use for everyone, and a nice way to get a sense of what's out there. I have several boards, keep on adding.

Back on Facebook of course; personal page and an art page at www.facebook.com/artmink. Just got back from NYC, saw the Whitney Biennial and all four blocks of Chelsea galleries. Everything felt a bit moribund, but maybe it was because it was middle of the week. Didn't see any work that looks like mine; I don't know if that's good or bad. Reality is I'm going to continue doing what I'm doing as well as I can.

I don't know whether getting off Facebook is the right thing to do or not, but I'm feeling the need to pare down a bit. My professional page can still be found at www.facebook.com/Artmink. Actually writing about what I'm doing lately seems like the better route. I'm continuing with acrylics on unprimed canvas, but have started incorporating more freehand marks, along with the lines and color bleeding that dominated in 2011. We'll see where this leads.