Spot On: See Spot Run A Conversation with Sharon Butler

Spot On: See Spot Run- quite a cheeky title for an exhibition of artists who utilize similar mark-making strategies. The exhibition, from 68 Prince St. Gallery, in Kingston, NY featured nine smaller paintings of mine hanging with larger paintings by Sharon Butler in the main gallery. Paintings on paper by Murray Hochman and Eileen Power hung in the front gallery.

 The spectacular curation by Alan Goolman fine-tuned the work of these divergent artists to create a harmony that was akin to improvisational jazz. His sensibilities paired paintings that underscored a poetic, sublime, and sometimes playful conversation. When I first walked into the space where my work hung along Sharon Butler’s weightless, washy, euphoric paintings, I felt like I met a long-time aesthetic sibling.

I am lucky enough to say there is a funny thing that happens when your work hangs among those of painters you have long admired. For someone like myself, who is often plagued by doubt in the studio, the feeling is an uncanny mixture of humility and validation. Honestly, I have been a huge admirer of Sharon Butler’s work for years. In fact, I’ve been known, during moments when I feel stuck, to peek online to see what she has been up to. How does she solve the pictorial problems that I’m dealing with?

When Alan proposed showing our works together, it was all I could do to contain myself. I had never met Sharon before the show, but I knew that she had a wide following of admirers as a painter AND a writer (being the brainchild of the popular and long-lived Two Coats of Paint blog). I was also familiar with the work and storied career of Murray Hochman. I understood that Spot On: See Spot Run was going to attract some curiosity.

Despite some of the coldest and bleakest weather of the year, the February opening was well attended. I asked Sharon if she would like to do a lecture or a talk at the gallery a few weeks later, and she agreed it would be a good idea. As a consummate introvert, I tend to shy away from doing public talks. I would much rather be alone in the studio than in front of a large group of strangers who are looking at you for insight. Sharon proposed doing an informal conversation between us, where we talk about process and the ideas that keep us going back to the studio.

What follows is a slightly edited transcript of the interaction between us, which was held at the gallery, on February 21^st, 2026. Alan Goolman started us off.

68 Prince Street Gallery, Kingston, NY. February 21, 2026

Sharon Butler, Jason Travers, and curator Alan Goolman

Alan Goolman

Thank you all for braving the weather to join us for this conversation between Sharon Butler and Jason Travers. For “Spot On,” I’ve tried to work within a framework or narrative. Sharon and Jason provided all the color and texture, and most importantly, the marks, or spots. Interestingly, the “Spot On” narrative began with a Murray Hochman spray painting in the front gallery. What I came to learn was that when spray paint cans begin to freeze, they no longer spray- they spatter. That spatter is how I landed on the title “Spot On,” and I set out to piece together the rest of the exhibition. I can’t quite remember how it all came together- I can’t remember if I saw Sharon’s or Jason’s work first. In Jason’s work, while clearly rooted in impressionism and landscape, his color, surface textures, and mark-making drew me in. His paintings were a perfect narrative. I still have no idea how I found Sharon, or what led me to Long Island City to see her work. Abstract Expressionism, Geometric Abstraction, Color Field, and Stain Painting are all within my wheelhouse and all within Sharon’s practice. When everything finally came together in the gallery, it was almost like creating sentences or writing a book. Sharon’s yellow painting was the cover. That one is a single page, a single statement. These paintings, turning the corner, create a sentence. Looking over there at another full sentence. This is a really interesting concept. It’s pretty clear that color drove me, though I'm not sure I had anything specific in mind as I was assembling things, everything came together. What you have are two extraordinary diverse painters interacting seamlessly.

In the front gallery, 91-year-old painter Murray Hochman, mentioned before, and the beautiful work of Eillen Power on paper and carved stone are on view. Woodworker and sculptor Kieran Kinsella was brought into the show at the last minute. In my narrative, his objects represent punctuation marks. Periods at the ends of sentences. We sold that piece this morning, so I'm thrilled about that. I'll leave it here and let Sharon and Jason take it from there. Thank you all so much for being here.

Sharon Butler

Thank you, Alan. That was a beautiful introduction.

Jason

Yes, I came in two weeks ago — I wanted to make sure I saw the show before the opening. When I walked into this room, I noticed such a harmony between our work. My jaw dropped. My only response was that I felt like it was a conversation between siblings. It’s as if we were working together in the same studio at the same time, using the same materials. Alan did such a great job. I think everyone should be commended— Alan, David, and Paula- for how the work came together. This show really harmonizes.

Sharon

Alan has an incredibly sensitive eye for color, and the pairings of the work are really thoughtful and visually compelling. They bring something out of my paintings that I hadn't seen there before. For example, that green area — I never really thought of it as having that much green, but paired with your green painting, both of them just sing.

Jason

And that's what you want in a group show, right? You want the work to augment each other and bring out strengths in each other's paintings.

Sharon

The title of the show is Spot On: See Spot Run. Do you consider those spots?

Jason

I'm not sure what to call them. I guess I think of them as points, or dots. I've been working with dots for a long time. When they first appeared, I was using them strictly as a formal element. I was looking for a way for the dots to simply hold space, a way to find a center of gravity. The dots were useful in that regard. But you can't put two dots in a field without creating some kind of relationship, an implied movement. I eventually stopped using them formally and started seeing them in a more metaphorical way — where they create a particular tension. I was fascinated by this. My mind went to billiard balls, how they imply movement, attraction, and repulsion; push, pull. From there I began thinking about movement on a microscopic and/or macroscopic level. The dots re-enact the movement of particles zipping through space, whether they are galaxies, atomic particles, or starling murmuration.  More recently, when I look at them, I see them in a much more fairy-tale way. To me, they feel very much like footprints. I like that footprints imply both absence and presence— like something is there, even though you're not seeing it now. So, the dots in my paintings are my invitation. They're my footprints as I walk through space, and I hope people follow.

Sharon

I have a similar experience. I started, of course, working with all geometric shapes, and this is the first body of work where I've narrowed it down to circles. The meaning of the shape shifts over time. At first, geometry was a way of reducing imagery so you could really focus on the relationships between shapes — relationships that become metaphorical. Geometric form also reflects the world around me; I live in the city. When I started this body of work, I had just moved to a beautiful new studio in Long Island City with a view overlooking all the rooftops with their vents and pipes.

The circle is a perfect shape — organic, but with a mechanical component. I learned in Tony Pratt's drawing class when I was a grad student that it's very hard to draw a perfect circle, and even harder to draw a perfect ellipse. An ellipse is a circle in perspective, and there's a very precise scientific way to draw one. I remember going on a jag of work that was all about trying to draw a perfect ellipse — an unattainable goal. That was the idea behind a whole body of work.  But the circle also represents a kind of truth. For instance (picks up a cup) we know that this cup's rim is a circle, but when we look at it, we see an ellipse — it's the perspective. We rarely see a true circle in the world unless it's a sphere And on a two-dimensional surface, of course a sphere becomes a circle. Now that I’m working on raw canvas, the circles become spots like the kind of spot you get on your shirt — they soak in.

Jason

So now you're moving from perfection to imperfection.

Sharon

Exactly.

Jason

I like that you bring up geometry, because part of why I like working with circles — or spots, or dots, whatever you want to call them — is that when you parcel them out on a canvas, they inevitably imply geometry. Our minds are always inclined to connect the dots, draw lines between them. As a young art-student I was trained by formalists. All my professors drilled into us allegiance to the grid. I rebelled against this later-on. In a way I’m a recovering formalist. I became more interested in telling stories, in tapping into the poetic. I found I could de-emphasize the importance of the grid by taking away the line but keeping the trace of the points. In some of your work, Sharon, I can see that the points are still conforming to a grid-like structure, even though the grid is no longer there— they imply he grid without being overt.

Sharon

Right.

Jason

And that brings us to what we do as children with connect-the-dots drawings. The structure is there, but it’s invisible. We do this when we map out constellations too. It’s only by connecting the dots that the form is revealed. You’re not asserting form, you’re leaving it to be discovered later on.

Sharon

There's something too about the feeling of a ramshackle grid – it has completely different associations than a perfect grid. Circles are often found in a pattern, but by not arranging them symmetrically, they're no longer a pattern.

Jason

And what does that mean to you? I almost see a sense of time — you can imply time.

Sharon

I like the imperfection of it — the intuitive placing rather than placing by system. I think of geometry as having the least emotional content. On a scale, I'd put geometric diagrams at the more intellectual, machine-like end, and something like Thomas Kinkade at the other end — a kind of mawkish sentimentality. In between, there's a whole spectrum of emotional content, and my work has always been about finding a sweet spot on that scale that reflects my circumstances.  For a period, I would take geometric forms and digital drawings that looked like IKEA diagrams — and change their context to give them emotional content. The paintings in this show begin dissolving the geometry. Someone who is not familiar with my older work might look at it and call me a neo abstract expressionist, but for me, it is all about the geometric shapes. This body of work was a long time coming — and I have arrived at this more feeling-oriented approach, rather than a conceptually-oriented one.

Jason, you work strikes me as Romantic.

Jason

I appreciate that.

I definitely feel like my roots are connected to the Romantic tradition. For me, it's about connecting with the “awe”, eliciting deep feeling. I would like my paintings not only to be seen but to be felt. I like for them to tease a sense of the mysterious, I want them to open up slowly. I'm still very much interested in sensory experience: obtaining information through the senses, whether through sight, sound, or touch. I want my paintings to reenact those kinds of sensory experiences found in nature. It's about that whole range you're describing between intellect and emotion; I'm always trying to find that sweet spot, too.

Sharon

And the materials, too. Those thick, luscious surfaces.

Jason

Well, doubt is the friend that follows me everywhere. The surfaces come about not just because I like surfaces, but because there's always re-questioning, reworking. What am I looking for when I work on the surfaces? A specific light sensibility. Alan mentioned landscape painting earlier, and landscape painting was very important to me as a young student— not just because I liked being outdoors, but because what I was trying to get from the landscape was not a pictorial representation so much as a certain emotion, a certain mood. In the landscape, light and space are united through color. That’s exactly what I continue to seek in my work. The question for me is how can I get the surfaces to elicit light, to have a sense of space, to have luminous color? The trick was layer upon layer, scraping away old layers, allowing the color underneath to come through. I paint as much with a palette knife as I do a brush. I found the luminosity to be more effective if I alternated between warm and cool washes. Occasionally I take away paint more than I apply. When I get it right, the color breathes — the canvas glows, but this is not an easy task.

Your paintings arrive at the same place, I think, though in a very different way.

Sharon

About two years ago I was working on canvases in oil — reworking and reworking and reworking. I was full of doubt. For many years, doubt was my friend, too -- my paintings were about doubt. But I grew tired of the struggle. You know how artists like Amy Sillman believe that paintings are about the struggle? I thought to myself: what if they're not? What else could a painting be about?  I made new rules for myself. One layer of paint. Before that, I should mention, I had done a whole series of work on paper in watercolor — double-sided, very small, soaked and stained. I loved the water-based media. How could I do that with oil? I couldn’t, so I switched to acrylic and water-based media, and that was a huge game changer. I could work on unstretched, unprimed canvas and just enjoy the process rather than struggling every day, knowing I'd have to wait a week or two for it to dry. The moment I switched to acrylic, the whole world opened up. I could soak into the canvas. One of my rules was that I wouldn't overpaint — but if it was a disaster, I could paste more canvas on top and start fresh. It's always about beginnings, not looking for a resolution that may or may not come.  I call it my period of non-suffering. I had a studio visit with a gallerist from Seoul, and she was thinking about something similar — she called it Clumsy painting — and one of the ideas she was exploring was a Buddhist concept of non-suffering. I started to think about that and said, yes, this could really work. How would you translate that into painting? One thing led to another, and here I am.

Jason

By doing that, you're giving yourself a lot of trust in the spontaneous act, a lot of freedom — which I find difficult to manage myself. I always go into the studio saying I want that trust in myself. Then the next day I go in and think: no, no, it needs more red.

So what's the trick?

Sharon

The trick is that I often piece more than one canvas together. These canvases are all two-sided — if you turn them over, you can see the painting that wasn't chosen. And given that, I can tear canvases apart and turn one side over and put the back with the front, so I have many more options. It's not just about whether something works or needs to be painted over. I have many more moves now. I've got new tricks.

Let’s  talk a little more about abstraction. Do you see your paintings as abstractions or something else?

 Jason

Well, first of all, I love the question: what exactly is abstraction? It's a conversation I like to have.

Sharon

The reason I was asking is that when I look at your work, it has a specificity — this could be fireflies in the evening, for instance. I can assign some kind of visual meaning to it. I was wondering if it works that way for you.

Jason

When people ask whether these are abstractions, I'd say they're abstractions in the sense that there's always a level of abstraction in all painting, even in highly representational work. However, my sensibility is empirical. The things that excite me visually are things I see in the world: the color of a split stone, old driftwood, the color of atmosphere at a certain time of day. The colors I gravitate towards are not necessarily high-key chromatic colors. I tend toward more specific, modulated color that might be grounded in natural observation. So, I don't really consider my paintings to be abstractions because they always hearken back to something experienced. I don't even really like the word 'abstract.'

Sharon

It implies something generic, generalized.

Jason

Well, everybody has their own definition of what the word ‘abstract’ means. Maybe the word was more useful at the beginning of the last century, when non-objective painting was novel, but the word has completely lost its meaning today. Usually, when people use the word, they mean some kind of false dichotomy between representational and non-representational painting. I don’t think it’s that simple. I see it more as a spectrum. Vermeer, for example — I think of him as having a high level of abstraction. His paintings mimic perceptual objective reality in a profound way. Yet they also have a geometry that are as tight as Mondrian's.

And speaking of our man, Mondrian- who can be more purely 'abstract' than him? Yet even Mondrian’s purity starts with the sensory. Think of his pier and ocean series from around 1914. He was struck by sunlight scintillating off the surface of water. When he paints it, though, he doesn’t replicate it— instead he makes a parallel to it. Mondrian was distilling, not abstracting. It begs the question whether he’s as pure an abstract painter as he’s meant to be. Even in his  Broadway Boogie Woogie he’s responding to the speed, the pace, the pulse of New York City. People don't always recognize how he was reacting to the everyday, the visual world. He was a very playful artist.

I think about his process when I'm in my studio — how he distills from visual experience. Perhaps it’s what I do. I consider Mondrian to be the best example of what people call an 'abstract' artist, yet he's still rooted in that empirical, sensory intake.

Sharon

The best abstraction brings in experience from everyday life.

What about politics? When I think about abstraction, it seems like the perfect idiom for speaking about political ideas. Have you thought about that?

Jason

I pretend not to — when my studio door shuts, the world gets shut out with it. I fume about politics, but once I'm in the studio, I want it to be a pure, almost sacred space. At the same time, I think politics inevitably comes through. For example, I start every morning in the studio working on paper. A few years ago, I began making a series of drawings of sinking ships — because that's how I felt things were going politically. When I’m working on these, right over my right shoulder I have a Philip Guston quote pinned to my studio wall. It’s a quote from the late 1960s, while Vietnam was raging— something to the effect of (and I’m paraphrasing here): ‘who am I to go into the ivory tower of my studio and pretend the most important thing is changing a blue to a green when all of this shit is going on?’ He clearly felt some guilt about the entitlement of being an artist in times of crisis. I so identify with Guston’s sense of guilt, as the world around me slips into chaos. I struggle with those same questions: what do we do as artists during times of upheaval? What’s our responsibility? Why are we making paintings when there are so many more important things happening in the world? And whenever I talk with other artists, I always ask: what is our role here? Somehow, it feels as if making art is always a political act.

Sharon

Some artists are naturally drawn to expressing political ideas in their work — politics is their obsession, their subject matter, their content. But not all artists are, and for some of us — I think for both of us — it's a refuge from terrible times. I publish Two Coats of Paint, and I think about political content there. I feel like if people want politics, they can read the Guardian, the New York Times, or Hyperallergic. Two Coats of Paint isn't denying there's a situation, but that we need more than that in our lives. I feel the same way about painting.  I also rely on materials and processes as metaphors for things that are happening in the world. You could see the process of non-struggle on one hand, but on the other, it's also a process of dissolution.  Maybe the Wicked Witch dissolving into the puddle — would that it were only that easy. But isn’t the world as we know it in the process of dissolving? I look at the processes of tearing, mending, soaking as metaphors. Not about politics per se, but I think the way I work reflects something about the times we're living through.

Jason

Well, I keep going back to that sinking ship analogy. It’s sometimes lost that even on the sinking Titanic there was hope for humanity. While it was sinking there was a string quartet playing for panicked passengers. These musicians continued to play while the ship was going down. The man who led that quartet was Wallace Hartley. I don't want his name to be forgotten. There was a time when I would think about him and feel angry— ‘why are you playing music when you should be getting on one of those boats and saving your skin?’ What could be more absurd, more futile, more frivolous than playing music while you’re facing death? Now I look back at his contribution differently, and I do think it was a contribution. He did the most important thing he could do. Instead of running for the lifeboats, he was restoring a sense of humanity, restoring a sense of humility, and providing beauty at the moment it was most needed— even if no one was listening. It was a selfless act that he paid for with his life. In a way, I feel that's the analogy for the artist today. I feel like all artists are Wallace Hartley— we’re playing music while the whole world is falling apart.

Sharon

I had the same feeling about Morandi, who lived through the wars in Italy. How could he keep making those paintings of jars and vases? Now I understand why he wasn't out in the streets — or maybe he was, but his practice continued. And I think that's something about being an artist. Painting is a lifelong practice. I'm not going to let them ruin my life. You have to keep going. Don't be an ostrich with your head in the sand — stay aware — but perhaps continuing to work is a small act of resistance.

Jason

I do sometimes feel like I might be burying my head in the studio. Part of me says I should be doing more, but at the same time I believe in the redemptive power of art— not just for myself, but for all of humanity. Artists are the last shamans. In pre-industrial society, the shaman was a mediator, communicating with forces that others couldn't communicate with. In an industrialized society, there are no longer shamans, though we need them. I feel like that has become the artist's role.

Sharon

Does anyone have questions or thoughts to add?

Audience Q&A

Audience Member (Speaker 4)

I'm curious about the spatial quality in both of your works — it's as if the universe expands. Could you talk more about that?

Sharon

The illusion of space in a two-dimensional painting?

Audience Member

More like an inner, emotional quality — how you treat space in your painting.

Sharon

I'll start. I use multiple pieces of canvas, which disrupts the space — it brings the painting into your space. Suddenly you're aware that you're looking at an object, not looking through the traditional window of a painting. Although I do like the play of space within the picture plane, especially on this one (points to Extratropical)  — there's an illusion of movement from the stuttering. Kathy Bradford called it 'a circle stuttering across the canvas.'

Jason

For me, space can mean different things. There's the physicality of the canvas, but coming from a more representational background, I still think of the canvas as having possibilities — you can paint on the surface, or behind the grid, or in front of it. I try to hold a space that has a bit of foreground, middle ground, and background, but not held together by conventional perspective — it's more about the layering of the surface. I want you to be able to look into the paintings, not just be aware of the surface. Almost like looking at a layer of ice on a pond — you're aware of the surface, but there's also a world beyond it.

Audience Member

There's a real sense of depth even though it's so light — like air. The difference between the subtle stained areas and the stronger shapes that sit in front creates something that feels alarmingly deep. I also wanted to ask: is there any intention when you start? Is there something you begin thinking this one is going to be about?

Sharon

The process guides me. I work on unstretched canvas — five canvases on a big table. I wet them all, the water soaks in, then I add paint. Then I flip one over, add more paint or draw on the other side, and reshuffle the order. They're staining each other — each one has marks made on it, but also marks absorbed through other canvases bleeding through. It's not until the next day, when they're dry, that I really see what's going on. Then I put them up and I can see those spatial situations.  I'm interested in the five ways we can create the illusion of space on canvas: position on the canvas, overlapping, color and value shifts, size, and perspective. I like to play with all of them.

Jason

That's fascinating, because I have a similar process which relies on randomness. I most often work on larger canvases which hang on my studio wall. Below these, I have a row of standard sized 16”x20” canvases that lean against the wall, ready to catch the paint drippings and scrapings from the paintings above. These smaller canvases may stay there for a few days or a few weeks, until their surfaces get built up, and things begin to happen. I don't take them seriously until I do. The process will create unpredictable incidents that I would never consciously control. That’s when I impose more order on them. They became a kind of practice for the bigger ones. I found I was giving myself more permission, more freedom with these smaller canvases. At a certain point, interesting things were happening on the small ones that influenced the bigger canvases. Then of course they went back and forth, influencing each other.

Audience Member 2 (Speaker 5)

It's great to hear you talk about the distinction between intuition and intention. Jason, when you lean those store-bought canvases on the floor, it's with the expectation that you're going to splash — so there's some oblique determination there. And Sharon, when you cut up those canvases, something other than pure luck is guiding the scissors. There's a very astute bit of editing before the work achieves its final form. And editing a blog and editing a painting share certain existential connections.  And the sweet spot you both mentioned, Jason — what were the terms? I wrote down 'visuality and feeling.'

Jason

Visuality and feeling?

Audience Member 2

Yes — visuality and feeling. And that raises the question: what part of visuality isn't already occupied by feeling?

Sharon

For me, it's the intellect — or the tension between intellect and emotion. I studied art history during the minimalist era, and many of my teachers later on were of that generation. The idea was the thing — you start with the idea and execute some kind of serial project. It wasn't until later that I began to think about emotional content. All art contains both, but you have to decide where you're going to land on that scale.

Audience member

Do you decide, or does it just happen?

Sharon

I decide. I was making these dark, pastoral landscapes — multi-panel pieces, a combination I used to describe as Ellsworth Kelly meets the Barbizon School. They did well — shows, sales — and I just thought, I can't do this anymore. It's too easy. I want to make something more challenging. So I brought geometry to the foreground, equating geometry with science and intellect.  This is something I later discovered when reading about Helen Frankenthaler's generation: after World War II, those painters were trying to eliminate geometry from their work because they saw it as science, and equated science with the atom bomb. Abstract expressionism was in part an attempt to embrace humanity and feeling rather than the mechanical. That was a revelation — I only read this last year.

Audience Member 2

Frankenthaler said she wanted forms for which no language would apply.

Jason

That's the magic, isn't it? We're visual artists — not necessarily verbal. How do you put words to something that's intuitive, a process that is ultimately visual? I don't know the answer. And when I get too much into my head in the studio, thinking in words, the painting doesn't hold together. I find myself constantly painting away from words.

Audience Member 2

Both of you are clearly very intelligent, which brings its own recognition of how limited a tool intelligence can be in the studio.

Sharon

One of my first painting teachers [Rob Moore at MassArt] told me I think too much. And it can absolutely get in the way.

Audience Member 2

Absolutely.

Sharon

But Jason and I have both developed processes that enable us to sidestep the intellect — at least for a time, until we get to the stage of looking and evaluating.

Jason

Intellect most often gets in the way of painting. I find it best to shut my thinking brain down when I’m working. Words are for the critic, or the historian, not the painter.

Sharon

Exactly. Any other questions?

Audience Member 3 (Speaker 6)

I work with geometry and intuition — I see them as connected rather than opposed. I don't find geometry to be antithetical to feeling. You can make something geometric with a very strong connection to your kinesthetic sense of being in the world — rhythm, space. Geometry used in a certain way can convey a lot of emotion.  I also want to comment on the paintings with very little paint on them — the light is extraordinary, like you're staring into the sun. The canvas itself seems to give off light. And looking at the yellow painting [Ivy] and the blue-violet one [Spit-take] — could you describe your process and how it differs? Because these feel like a kind of printmaking — layered stages, with that final layer revealing everything accumulated beneath.

Sharon

Those are earlier paintings. I was lucky to be invited to the Golden Foundation residency where I could use all the different products they have — as an individual artist you can't buy everything. I had been limiting myself to tubes of paint, mixing them into water, letting them sit overnight. At Golden, they introduced me to fluid acrylics and a range of other products. The process has evolved, but those earlier works were made there.

Audience Member 3

So the light quality in those — you're dealing with color as a layer, whereas in the others, the canvas itself is the bottom layer, and that's where all the light comes from.

Sharon

Exactly. I started really loving the earlier stages of these works — they looked something like those at first, and then I went back and worked on them more. Eventually I started responding to what was already on the canvas, rather than how many products I could use. (laughs) Experimenting with the products at Golden was an amazing opportunity, but what emerged was a greater responsiveness to the surface itself.

Audience Member 3

A couple of these are so musical — the way the circles are positioned, little notes moving in and out. There's a real layering in time.

Sharon

Yes — there is that.

Audience Member (Speaker 4, returning)

I was thinking about that element of time in both of your works.

Jason

Time is something I think about a lot. Painting is atemporal by its very nature — so how do you make that level of time present in the work? For me, it's about not giving it away too quickly. One reason I use subtle color relationships is so that changes are only apparent gradually. That's how I use time in painting.

Ginny (Speaker 7)

Seeing the show from back here gives a wonderful perspective — the way the color has been curated gives this luminous flow through the secondary colors, the orange into the green, and then the scale of both of your works creates a kind of pulse. Sharon's pieces feel close and yours feel deep, and then it just completely flips — which makes for a fascinating experience of depth perception.  And I can feel the landscape in the smaller pieces. There's something almost Monet-ish in them, especially Sharon's piece on the far wall — it's a real centerpiece. They're luminous, they're beautiful. It's a striking juxtaposition, these two artists. I love the way Alan curated the color.

Alan

It was interesting finding exactly the right pieces and placing them within the space — allowing the color to move. The most difficult piece was the yellow painting; it really had its own gravity, its own moment. And the most interesting, almost accidental thing happened — David was with me — when we moved one painting and put the diptych adjacent. It had been on the floor by accident, and I looked and said, wait a second. And it just became a permanent arrangement. It's a beautiful wall. They're extraordinary paintings — the depth, the surface action, the atmosphere. Both of you — there's so much air in this work, so much atmosphere.

Ginny

A lot of air. A lot of air.

Alan

It works beautifully — it really does.

Sharon

It was a pleasure to come in and see the show hung — completely unexpected and beautiful.

Audience member

Well,that seems like a good place to end.

Applause.