Direct to you from Lincoln Centre

Yes!  I was there -- New York City's Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts.  It was a year and a half ago now, but so unforgettable.  I took a gazillion photos that I'll probably never get into albums to share because when I view them, I get lost in a wonderful reverie of memories. 

When I sought out this photo, I found plenty of "denizens" like these loungers on the 14-acre grounds of Lincoln Centre -- just waiting to be immortalized in one of my paintings?

But...it isn't this Lincoln Centre that led to today's post.  It's this one:--

Hmmmm.  What  IS this?  Let's take a peek inside.

Okay.  It's a well-travelled book, at some time discarded from the Lincoln, Maine, Public Library -- and then wending its way through several second-hand stores until it came into the hands of my niece's mother's cousin in Massachusetts.  She grabbed it with a bunch of others, intending it for the free book exchange in my niece's little town and passed it on to niece's mother -- my lovely simpatico "new" sister-in-law, discovered on that same memorable trip.  Sister-in-law promptly snagged it, read it, and decided it was meant for me.  I opened my mailbox one day to find:--

Now, it happens that I'd long ago seen a book of  paintings by Raphael Soyer, an American artist who's little known today.  They hadn't then appealed to me, but his self-portrait on this cover enthralled me, as did the writings in his diary.  It only made sense, then, to give it a shot -- to try to emulate this marvellous painting.  And so I set to work:

Such an instructive process -- looking every day at the shapes, the tones, the edges, the brushstrokes.  I don't work in oils, as Soyer did, but I still learned a ton.  The outcome, though far from an exact copy, thrills me -- because I can look at it, propped against a shelf in my living room, and be continually challenged:  How did he do it?

My version, up close:

His diary and the further reading I've done about his colleagues -- so many of them known to me -- have made me very fond of this man, who wrote: 

 "From all that I have seen, I am more than ever convinced that art must communicate, and it must represent, describe and express people, their lives and times."

I realized, too, that on my unforgettable trip, I must have seen Soyer at the Whitney Museum of American Art.  Back to my photo collection.  YES!

Huge sigh!  -- I saw so much fantastic art.  Now let's come full circle with New York's Lincoln Centre.  In planning my trip, I knew that I'd be watching for the famous tile art in NYC's subway stations -- a commonplace, I suppose, to New Yorkers but a revelation to me when I first saw the paintings of  Daniel E. Greene.  He was a handsome young artist/teacher when I met him 40 years ago in the pages of the now-defunct magazine "American Artist."  You *have* to see what he did with people and tile art in his Subway Paintings.

This has been a circuitous trip.  Now, as we hop back on board, you might feel inclined to ask, "What's our next stop?"