Yesterday on YouTube, I met Marlene Dumas on Munch, Tracey Emin's  Liverpool's installation, "I Felt You and I Knew You Loved Me" and an upcoming painter, Antonia Showering. All wonderful, but it was this interview that made me blog. David's dad immigrated from Korea in 1963, the same year as my dad and both dads were originally from North Korea. We both share the unusual Korean last name Chang. A gem of an interview. Authentic, great questions, touching. 

"Aguirre, the Wrath of God" is a film I have never forgotten, and recently I learned more about the extraordinary Werner Herzog as a self-taught filmmaker through his Masterclass. I currently have 3 chickens, 2 Speckled Sussex- Snowy Roo and Minty and a Silver Seabright Bantam named Fey 3000. The piece on the right was offered to me by YouTube algorithm. It made my sides hurt. 

His underwater gardens/art installations/museums are making a better future for our oceans. Bravo! The power of art. 

A beautiful ELECTRIFYING conversation of kindred spirits. Everyone was on the verge of crying including me. 

This video will make you see Joan Mitchell's personality and paintings completely differently.

Pauline's paint, photography, college 1961 "It's a Man's World". "Pauline Boty's Nightmare" is a restored clip from a Ken Russell documentary. Simple, scary and creepy in just the right amount for me. Love this!!! In "The Great Women Artists Podcast", Katy Hessel interviews Sue Tate, art historian and expert on Pauline Boty.

I've practiced martial arts for many years, but recently I have also been learning partner dancing in ballroom and West Coast Swing. I have watched many dance performances, but this rumba-- is pure magic. Slavik Krykyyvyy and Karina Smirnoff competed together and dated for years before separating for 9 years. When then reunited as dance partners, they made this showcase performance.  

Unskilled Worker aka Helen Downie painted this after the white supremacist racist violence in Charlottesville in 2017. ​

One day, I happened to find these in my mom's garage. A friend had left them there and gone back to Korea. I treasure them, and they inspire my paintings. 

His paintings feel close to me. I hope i can see his show in person one day. 

Today I came across this traditional Korean martial art for the first time. This was likely depicted in Kokuryo murals possibly originating in the Three Kingdoms period (over 2000 years ago). Song Duk Ki (1893-1987) kept this form alive as it was almost lost during Korean Independence. I continue to be touched by traditions that are almost lost but kept alive by the passionate devotion of an individual or a small group of people. This is the same feeling I have for the Korean folk art and embroidery that inspire my paintings and in my practice of Tai Chi as a martial art. It's the knowledge that these practices and objects are ancient, precious and carefully passed from one generation to another. I want to treasure them and make them alive.

You or Me (2005), Lady with Brain (1990-99), Self with Guinea Pig (2000)
Seeing her connection to Alice Neel, Dana Schutz and Jenny Saville. Then I think of De Kooning, Cecily Brown, then Francis Bacon. 

She calls it "...a love letter to Black Britain." It was commissioned for the National Portrait Gallery in London. The left is Jamaican palms, the right a map of where Sadie's from. In Katy Hessel's interview, Toyin says she'd most like to meet- Elizabeth Catlett, Frida and the writer of the Tale of Genji, the world's first novel. Toyin's- exploration of uncomfortable storytelling, full of possibility, can't be pinned down. 

A fascinating life and evolution as an artist. Makes me want to know a lot more about the Harlem Renaissance and how interconnected it was. 

I saw this on TV when I was a violin playing, church nerd elementary school child of Korean immigrants living in the suburbs of Long Island. It's Woody Allen as misfit turned criminal Virgil Starkwell in the mockumentary, Take the Money and Run. I've never forgotten how hard I laughed, and since then I have followed Woody Allen's career and life. Though I have not seen all 50 of his movies, he is one of the world's great filmmakers and makes among the most complex and interesting cinematic roles for women(E.g.Wonder Wheel).  

PS I am a Woody defender to the end. Truth is stranger than any fiction. ​

I was looking for "3 Month Old Lung Patient" which is the painting she said she kept for herself. I could not find it, but I found: "The Dance of Life in Nhamacurra" and "Resting Embryo and Orange Moon" and "Little is Enough for Those in Love". ​

Fantastic interview with Alyce Mahon, curator of Leonor Fini: Theater of Desire exhibit. Also Tracey Bashkoff curator on Hilma af Klimt and Johanna Moorhead on Leonora Carrington. Much to discover in the Great Women Artists Podcast with Katy Hessel. If Katy asked me who I would most like to meet, I might say Leonor Fini.

Another YouTube gem. This reading has made me see Gauguin differently and Keanu too. Keanu says, "..for what we leave behind, for who we want to be... It is the most human thing." PS- Peter Doig's art is in the background which he acknowledges. CRUSH!!

The Artist Project from the Met has contemporary artists commenting on works in the collection. Mariko considers the bowing and nature of respect in the Japanese tea ceremony, seeing the unseen, and what it means universally for all beings.

The Guggenheim exhibit 2018-19 that blows everyone's mind and rewrites modern art-  "HIS story"

Doig says," I wanted this painting to be dreamlike." This painting was started eight years prior. I identify with what sounds like a kind of fermentation process and his feeling of geographical outsiderness/displacement. Love the sensitivity in this painting.

"Leonor Fini: Theater of Desire" was a phenomenal show in 2018. Thank you Museum of Sex curators.

"Don't compete. Don't compare. Don't complain, Don't explain." 

You give me courage. I look forward to your next novel.