Stephen Brophy: Natural Born Artist — In this, my 22nd post on the art and life of Stephen Brophy (1940–2015), I come to a stopping place, at least for now. It was a good run. I said what was in me to say about a big bear of a complicated, wonderful man artist. I’m sad it’s…

What being a self-taught artist really means —

There is No Clear Right Answer — Voyager as image of an old, three-story house is on its own journey. The painting by Stephen Brophy (1940–2015) follows the print, follows the drawing, follows the photo. I’m hoping it will come clear why Steve named a house after a ship at sea or some itinerant traveler. …

5 Abstract Artists In Hudson Abstract works by five artists were recently on view in a crowd-pleaser of an exhibit at the Carrie Haddad Gallery in Hudson, New York (March-April 2017). I’ve written here about the show, but not as a critic. Because I can’t be fair. I was married…

How writing about someone else can be a creative release — After posting 16 stories in three months about Stephen Brophy’s artwork and my reactions to it, to him, to us, I thought it’d make sense to pause and take stock. …

Etchings and other techniques —

Art and Life Come Full Circle — William Blake’s Tyger Tyger, 1794 TYGER, tyger, burning bright In the forests of the night, What immortal hand or eye Could frame thy fearful symmetry? In what distant deeps or skies Burnt the fire of thine eyes? On what wings dare he aspire? What the hand dare seize the fire…

Scenes of a Self-Taught Artist’s Youth — — A mother strolls across Tremont Avenue in the Bronx with her baby-blue baby carriage. — A man walks his dog under the marquee of a movie house showing Dark Passage, the 1947 Bogie/Bacall classic. — A young boy pulls on his mother carting her groceries on their way home…

Or, How to Love a Painting of Nothing Recognizable — Stephen Brophy’s early career as a painter brought to the canvas the observable life. But his late career was almost exclusively abstract: sometimes very gestural — as in this beauty from the mid-1980s — and sometimes cooler and flatter, as in the geometric abstractions that came later. In these paintings…