John Kelly: A FRIEND GAVE ME A BOOK at PPOW 

I walked into the PPOW gallery the morning my friend Riki died. The 182-panel illustrated small drawings by New York artist John Kelly, which extend as an open graphic memoir around the gallery, captured me instantly, letting me in on a personal journey of mortality, pain, and beauty. There was something generous in the way Kelly handed his notebook and shared the manuscript of his injury. It resonated with my thoughts of investigating and dwelling on mourning and mortality. 

Continue reading “John Kelly: A FRIEND GAVE ME A BOOK at PPOW “

David Konigsberg at Carrie Haddad Gallery

A picture containing wall, indoor, decorated, painted

Description automatically generated
Carrie Haddad Gallery, Hudson, NY – My Own Backyard, a group show featuring work by David Konigsberg on view through July 31st (image courtesy of Carrie Haddad Gallery)

Traditional, yet innovative; reflective, yet distant, David Konigsberg’s landscapes and still lifes are rife with double-backs and unexpected turns. A self-proclaimed “solitary wanderer,” Konigsberg gathers imagery and visions from long walks through the Catskills, through surrounding terrain, and through his own backyard. He views all as equally minute and equally monumental, from a peaked horizon to a burst of petals collected from his garden. This confluence of near and distant perspectives creates an almost literary quality; the intimacy of first-person voice jockeying with the scope of an omniscient narrator. David’s paintings resist a certain aboutness, allowing simultaneous narratives to proliferate across the bodies of his canvases, culminating in an emotional sucker punch.

Continue reading “David Konigsberg at Carrie Haddad Gallery”