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| Larry Wolf, March on Washington for Lesbian and Gay Rights (1987) |
Wednesday, April 15, 2026
Tuesday, April 14, 2026
Monday, April 13, 2026
Studio Day 64
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| Gertrude Abercrombie, brooch Milwaukee Art Museum photo: Larry Wolf (2026) |
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| Marsden Hartley, Garmisch-Partenkirchen (1933) Milwaukee Art Museum photo: Larry Wolf (2026) |
“I think painting for him was a struggle. I think he was always struggling with those basic problems of being alive. ...
"Everything is a potential existential crisis. For an artist, you want potential. You want there to be conflict. Conflict creates friction. Friction create heat. When there's heat, there's potential for combustion, explosion, new knowledge. ...
"He was never satisfied with his work. At the same time, he was completely convinced of his own genius. That's enough to keep a person going. Why should you quit, if you're a genius? ...
"Hartley's most homoerotic work.. a totemic object.. it's all about the torso.. brute force.. like a tree trunk of a human being right in front of him. These men are elemental forms. It's not about the sweetness and tenderness of familial bonds between two men, it's barely homosexual. ...
"'I want this mountain. I need it. I have to touch it. I have to have it.' And the mountain rejects the artist. 'I have been here before you. You cannot possibly possess me.' Nevertheless, he's there trying. Grappling with it. Struggling with the thing he would like to possess. He gets the next best thing which is to possess an elemental symbol or idea of it. He does that with paint. ...
"I'm always excited to see a Marsden Hartley painting in the flesh, in person, in close contact with it. I'm excited. What I've learned to look for is there are big clumsy brush marks, clunky composition, it's thick. He's not trying to finesse reality, he's trying to beat reality out of the thing he's looking at."
Sam McKinniss, painter (b. 1985)
Thursday, April 9, 2026
Tuesday, April 7, 2026
Studio Day 62
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| Advance Reader Copy of Douglas Stuart, John of John photo: Larry Wolf (2026) |
"There had been a time in their late twenties when it seemed John could no longer pretend. He would come to Innes, his eyes rubbed pink with guilt and exhaustion. ... In those days, John snuck away more frequently and it was a feast for Innes. They led the dogs on long unnecessary meanders, until they found a hollow in the hillside somewhere dry, somewhere away from the eyes of their neighbours. The land was so bare it was a hard thing to find, but over the years they had come to map all the places they could be together and they came to know them by the flowers that grew nearby, or by the shape of the rocks that hung overhead.
...
"He would ... ask John to spend a sunny afternoon curled up with him, the curtains drawn tight against the world... He had magazines about the gay community and he would read articles about the need to abolish Section 28, about the director who tended a garden next to a nuclear reactor. He would declare that what they were was 'gay'. And John would bear it silently. And he would hate it."
[Douglas Stuart, John of John, pages 169 & 222]
the director who tended a garden next to a nuclear reactor / Derek Jarman
Saturday, April 4, 2026
Studio Day 61
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| Larry Wolf, Spring (2026) |
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| Paul Thek, Meat Cable (1969) Art Institute of Chicago photo: Larry Wolf (2026) |
Friday, April 3, 2026
Studio Day 60
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| Larry Wolf, Ghosts of Bodhisattvas (2026) Bodhisattva Reimagined: The Buddha of the Future Made Whole Art Institute of Chicago |
also Studio Day 52
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