Last week I went to the galleries in Chelsea looking for inspiration. It’s the one place I can regenerate and plug into when I’ve come to a dead end. It’s good to see through other artists eyes. I use the galleries like a library. It’s a form of research I do to find some path that might open a door into a new direction. Even if I don’t see something exciting, since it’s all so hit or miss, I’m still able to absorb an energy that fuels hours of work later. The art I found myself gravitating to this time was large, visceral paintings with a spontaneous explosive quality about them…work that felt fresh and honest without being self-conscious. It’s art that doesn’t take itself so seriously and reaches for a childlike abandonment.

On some level I knew this is exactly what’s missing in my own work. While it’s important to have good skills, innovation needs to distinguish itself in the way the art is executed. After looking at work in gallery after gallery, I’ve come to the conclusion if a painting doesn’t work, then collage over it, throw paint at it, use your hands, your feet on it...anything that pushes the art further.

I must admit I came back to my studio no longer just a painter. The canvas that made me sick with a stress cold last week, suddenly has taken on a new feel. I just collaged over what wasn’t working, used a pallet knife and finger painted into it. I call it art play now, which gives the work a whole different set of expectations.   

The reason I mention any of this is because I feel we have just come through a period of art that did not serve the artist well. Creativity suffers at the hands of businessmen, who in the last two decades determined what was marketable and what was not. Art is, after all, a business and the artist a pawn who is bought and sold in the market place. Large corporations dictated what had value and warehoused the work they collected. It was as if they were collecting the artist and didn’t much care about the art. Large amounts of money was invested with the art world scrambling to be part of it. To me this felt like the death of art. It was as if the more an artist could shock the sensibilities of the public, the more well known the work became.

This leads me to the question “who is determining what is art?” I was watching a show on the Ovation channel about how six art graduates were chosen to live and work in New York City as cameras followed their progress. What was interesting about this was how there were very few painters who applied for this opportunity. When asked why this should be, the answer was simple, the universities are not turning out painters these days. It seems the colleges are pushing digital photography, video and installation art. So it appears it’s the educational system, the higher institutes of learning, who are now dictating the direction of the art world.

While fewer art students are studying painting, it seems to me many of the galleries in Chelsea are still showing and selling works on canvas. The way I see it, drawing and painting is a personal and spiritual art form that needs to keep reinventing itself to remain fresh but is not going anywhere soon. So as long as the human spirit has the need to leave its mark, I feel confident painting will survive. 

Years ago when I was a member of the Philadelphia Artist Equity they had taken a no fee stand on juried exhibits. It was a large and important organization which had a big influence in the art community…strength in numbers. It actually stopped the fees because artists stood together and boycotted shows with a pricetag. 

There’s a sense of helplessness about entering these exhibits. The artist population is somewhat at the mercy of the establishment. Many of the galleries that offer juried exhibitions do it to make their rent. I know what I’m talking about, I was once a member of a co-op gallery in New York and was unwittingly part of this process. Sadly, there’s something that feels desperate about it.

What’s the answer? I propose that a gallery or organization find another way to make the funds to run one of these shows. Applying for grants is one way of bringing in money, or having a fundraiser, or charging a membership that gives a free entry to their juried exhibition... museums offer this, or, at the least, just charge artists whose work is accepted into the show.

Do we not exhibit our work because there’s a fee, or do we gulp down our pride and do it anyway? I think we have an obligation to seek out and support the no fee shows. They’re out there. As artists we need to show a stronger, organized presence.

In the early days of my painting career, the OK Harris Gallery and Nancy Hoffman Gallery, both at the time in Soho, were two of the most accessible places for artists to approach. Nancy Hoffman had days she would look at portfolios and Ivan Karp was always available to artists off the street. While he was frank and to the point, his passion for the artist and their work was always apparent. I valued the time he gave me every time he said, “No thanks.” I grew from the experience. Perhaps this is what they call “paying your dues".

It saddens me to see so many wonderful artists working in the shadow of the art world without representation. I realize there are degrees of vision and talent and not every artist who walks through the doors of a gallery has the same esthetics as that gallery, but communication can give an artist the kind of hope that might make the difference in their future work.

So it seems to me, without the artist there would be no need for the gallery. I would just like a better dialogue between the two…I’m just saying.

This brings me to an article I read recently about how there’s this growing population of older female artists who have worked their entire lives with little recognition. This is truly an untapped treasure of work that needs to be discovered. There’s an honesty in work that struggles through adversity and still finds its own power without compromise. It’s art that has something to say. While there are many women’s art exhibits today, there’s still a sense of exclusion about them. I don’t like my work to be labeled as female. I would like to think when someone looks at my work they are excited about what they see, not the fact that I’m a woman. I don’t want my work to have a gender.

While there might be more women in the galleries today than in the past, the galleries are still dominated by men. It seems that hasn’t changed much. So I want to send out a challenge to those who have opportunities for artists not to forget the rich and talented population of older women artists. They have years of skill and insight developed in the shadows of an art world that can gain from their point of view. There are more galleries in New York today and I hope they have become sensitive to the depth of talent still waiting to be discovered.

As a young student aspiring to be an artist, I struggled with art history and all the academic subjects behind making art. I didn’t learn to appreciate any of it until later when I started to achieve on my own. I was told at the time that one percent of one percent of art students ever made it big. So why did so many of us still want to pursue art careers? It certainly wasn’t for the money.

You don’t go into art thinking you’re not talented. Something has to drive the need to work long hours in isolation with little recognition. For me it’s not just the inherent need to make art, but the innate knowledge I have the talent to do it. I see now how my earlier training is actually the engine that allows my work to find its voice. It’s the skills I’ve learned and continue to learn that moves my work forward.

So the way I see it, it isn’t enough to just have a natural ability or aptitude to create, I also have to be vigilant about developing new skills. I need to remain curious about new ideas. It’s the combination of talent and skill that distinguishes my work from what’s already out there.

I've written before about working large to make an impression, which is one way of getting attention, but there has to be something more to keep the viewer's interest. When I was ten years old I went with my father to the museum and saw an exhibit of surrealist painters. I still remember in detail a large painting of a tree composed of little babies. My father and I stood in front of that painting trying to guess how many figures we could count in it. Also that day I saw for the first time Salvador Dali’s painting “The Persistence of Memory”. I know for sure we stood in front of those paintings for longer than thirty seconds. It was something I would not forget all these years later. I think that experience had a big influence on my becoming an artist.

While I've written about working large to make an impact, using subject matter that's layered with meaning, has a better chance of lingering in the viewer's mind long after it’s been seen. I don't mean obvious imagery that preaches and tells you what to think. It’s in the subtlety of subject matter that allows the viewer to draw his or her own conclusions. This gives the work power.

I've been told my large acrylic paintings makes the viewer uncomfortable. This is often typical of surrealism. If nothing else, it has given me a kind of freedom to take chances and force the viewer to have a kind of dialogue with the work. Hopefully this will make them linger longer than thirty seconds.

So what kind of art scene do they have here? I can only say it's in the early stages similar to when Soho first became a major scene. There is a growing area of galleries in the warehouse section called Moganshan Lu. It's still a little raw with large and small concrete spaces that don't yet have the sophistication of the New York art scene, but I can see it's only a matter of time before this place evolves. I found some good work here.

The artist Wei Yi’s large oil paintings of rural laborers was inspiring. This series of paintings takes us into the homes and lives of how a large part of the population exists in China. In this collection of somber brownish paintings Wei Yi uses full scale images of laborers who are bachelors working to save enough money to marry...their hard existence shows on their weathered faces. The work has freshness while using a limited range of color.

Another artist who impressed me was Yang Zhenzhong. His large photographic installation of women sitting at a long table viewed from the knees down was placed in the gallery space in photographic sections, which were tilted in various directions and held in place by wires that reached floor to ceiling. The viewer can walk through the installation as if it were a photographic landscape, yet when seen through a peephole positioned in front of the sections of photos, the larger picture comes together as if one photograph. In order for this piece to work a mathematical precision was needed to create the right perspective.

There's still a degree of unspoiled vision in the best of the work in China from what I can see. While the country is going through transition, the artwork at its best is reflecting it. This kind of documentation records the country’s visual, emotional and intellectual history of a changing time, and again, this is what the artist does best.

I loved hearing this since I’ve been saying forever, the larger my work gets, the more noise it makes. You can’t walk past a large canvas without glancing at it. While I don’t have a large factory-sized space to work in, I’m becoming more adventurous in how I work. I no longer think small and that’s the difference in the conception of new work. There’s a sense of ambition and scope in larger paintings which presents a greater challenge. You have to be a good painter to pull it off. Flaws are easily noticed when skills are not at their best. However, there’s also a kind of freedom that comes with using large brushes. It’s a more physical experience, and for me, that's what energizes the work.

I'm becoming more inventive these days as my canvases grow larger. By thinking large my collages are getting more ambitious. This gives the paintings a new kind of excitment. I'm experimenting again and this has me in my studio pushing myself again. I think we should never allow ourselves to become lazy or complacent and by working out of my comfort zone I'm able to grow as an artist.

Since I’m a painter myself, I was particularly intrigued with the narrative approach these artists used to create an idyllic sense to the girls they painted. Often the colors were soft and had a purity with spontaneous brushstrokes. While these are American artists, the European influences are there in the techniques used. There are also paintings done by itinerant primitive artists who went from town to town painting wealthy children in stylized poses. They used pure red colors in their stylized work, which seemed to distinguish their works at the time. Some of these paintings are in the exhibit as well. I find it interesting how paintings of 19^th century boys were painted in active poses, while girls had a more passive demeanor. This reflected the attitudes of how society saw women at the time.

If you like good painting this is the show to see. While it’s a visual history of family life during the 19^th century, it’s also a measure of how far women have come today. It’s great to see how these paintings have endured and continue to attract an audience.

This show will be on view until January 20^th.