My shoes are worn out and my pants feel loose. I should have used a device to track how many miles I walked each day. Having recently returned from travels to London, Paris, Barcelona, and Madrid, I visited over a dozen museums and art galleries, viewed hundreds of works of art, and walked all through the rooms and streets and cities to experience new art and culture. It was an art pilgrimage, in a way, to study masterful works of art that I'd only seen in books -- an inspiration to my art practice.
I still haven't organized all of my photographs, notes, or writings about the journey, yet upon my return to Los Angeles, I recognized that, while Europe harbors a vast number of masterpieces from long past, Los Angeles does indeed exhibit many inspirational pieces from the present. Sometimes it is easy to forget, it is easy to take for granted, the great things your home city offers. Sometimes 70 degrees and sunny just feels like another day at the grind.
Here are a few contemporary paintings I recently saw and found them to be motivating . . .
A detail of Mark Grotjahn's painting currently at LACMA's 50th Anniversary exhibition (oil on cardboard on linen, completed within the last 5 years I think, and similar to his work currently at Blum & Poe):
A detail of Andrew Dadson's painting currently at David Kordansky gallery (oil on canvas):
Elizabeth Neel's painting currently at Susanne Veilmetter Gallery (acrylic on canvas I think):
So, yes, Los Angeles has some damn good art too.