The Paintings on My Refrigerator

When I bought a new refrigerator last summer, a friend looked at its bare whiteness and commented that it needed some color. She was right, so I went into the studio and looked through my postcard collection, selecting some to attach to the metal door with magnets. Just the other day I was looking at the paintings I'd chosen and noticed for the first time that there was only one 20th century painting, the Morandi, while all the others went back to the 15th, 16th, or 12th century. How curious, I thought, that as much as I love minimalist abstraction, the images I see in my much lived-in kitchen are representations––of animals, humans, fruit––while abstraction is found in my work room and studio.

Beginning with the starkly expressive Saint Anthony by the Master of the Osservanza, one of my great inspirations in using egg tempera, and ending with a marvelously loopy 12th century Spanish fresco of a camel, each painting has a presence and beauty that I don't tire of. Morandi's painting of simple objects have an emotional resonance (I wrote about the Morandi show at the Met here). Vermeer, also painting the ordinary, imbues all with a transcendent light. The two Chinese paintings, a portrait of Kublai Khan and a man on a horse, were in the exhibition of Yuan dynasty art at the Met last year, which I wrote about in this post; I love the way line expresses minimal form in these works, and because I used to ride, I feel a special tenderness for the horse. Next to the portrait of Kublai Khan is a beautiful illuminated manuscript page by Jean Bourdichon, a 16th century artist. These exquisitely rendered, tenderly observed manuscript works (such as that of The Hours of Catherine of Cleves) moved me to make small paintings on parchment, my current body of paintings. And finally, between horse and camel, a forceful and solid Fayum mummy portrait from Egypt's 2nd century; I love this young woman whose dark mass of hair emphasizes the intense gaze of her overlarge eyes.




In my work room is a book shelf with volumes on abstract painters. On the wall next to my painting table is this image of Robert Mangold's studio wall, covered with drawings. I love looking up and seeing the range of color and shape, so simple, so lively.




And in the studio are a few postcards I got at Dia Beacon, one of the most gorgeous, expansive, exciting art spaces I've ever visited. Walking into the large, light filled space and seeing those gleaming perfect shapes by Walter De Maria receding in space, made my heart swell. Room after room was full of amazing work. The two cards at top are Blinky Palermo, then Richard Serra, Robert Ryman and Walter De Maria. I love having these cards to remind me of the powerful experience of that museum. Don't many of us buy art postcards as mementos, signs to guide our visual memory, even though they are pale pale imitations of the originals? Our postcard gatherings are a kind of shrine to the art we love.