Praeterita

I've known the artist John Tomlinson for a few years. And by known, I mean "known", in that we so far have only become acquainted with each other via social media (though there was one near miss in New York City a few years ago). Such is the way of things, one feels after a while that one knows someone in the old fashioned way, too, after sharing and reading about each other's lives and works over a period of time. He is a phenomenal draughtsman, as this image of a graphite drawing shows: You can see a lot more of his work over at his website . I've also just become aware that he has begun a blog, and a handsome affair it is too. As a former professor of art at Parsons, and the director of the New York Studio Residency Program, what he has to say about art is going to be worth listening to. So in order to share the blog love, here is a link to John Tomlinson's nothing but art blog .

Landscape is both a physical space and an aesthetic construction. It is the land that surrounds us and upon which we live, and it is the organization of that exterior space within a genre of the visual arts. Any artist whose practice connects with land, earth, or terrain, is dealing from the beginning with that twin focus, looking both outwards to the world and then back into the interior world. The land outside, and the land within. In this group show at a recently opened space at Chicago’s Hubbard Street Lofts, three artists showed work inspired by the land beneath our feet, the inner reflection of the outer world, and the land seen from afar. Marzena Ziejka, A small landscape without vegetables , found dropcloth, monofilament, acrylic polymer Marzena Ziejka‘s work includes pieces that she made by scooping up soil and glueing it to large panels. They have an interesting tactility reminiscent of her large works in fibre, her customary medium, though I think they lack the visual c...