"empty the closet" sale

It was "empty the closet sale" at the art club today -- and there was a queue of bargain hunters for the two hours after it opened. Much had sold by the time I got there --- but I'm doubting they took anything I would miss.


Precise drawing of volume is what distinguishes post-Renaissance painting from everything else that's ever been done --- and if this painting is such an attempt -- it fails -- but it succeeds in evoking the memory of April (the young woman, not the month) who was a very popular model here for several years before she finally moved to the Hollywood with her new, movie-industry boyfriend. This portrait shows her determination to make something of herself -- which is usually well hidden by her extraordinarily sweet demeanor. She looks like a martyr/saint as painted by Giotto, doesn't she ? Maybe the one whom some oriental king had tied to a team of horses. ( He was trying to drag her off to a brothel -- but, of course, he failed.)



Diane Rath painted two quick studies of artists in the club's studio-- with a saccharine, down-home, comfy, looseness. The cutest one sold while I was there -- but the other stayed on the wall -- because the subject, Dominic Vignola (another one of our lifer-artist-teachers) resisted sentimentality -- a resistance that I found appealing.



This one is by young Scott Talman (again) --- and I can't help but connect this urbane sophisticate with my dearly missed, Manhattan grandmother - who posed for a painting demonstration 50 years ago by the New York painter, Mark Toby. ( and I'm guessing that this painting is also a demo. As I look at it, I can feel the people looking over my shoulder)