Structure and Imagery

Pathfinder , 1989 Installation photo with Corridors of Uncertainty , 2005 Corridors of Uncertainty , 2005 and Five Steps to Nowhere , 2002 House of Ambition , 2010, and Pathfinder , 1989 House of Ambition , 2010 Corridors of Uncertainty , 2005 Five Steps to Nowhere , 2003 All Ends Up, 2004 When the First Is Last and the Last Is First, 1999 * All photographs courtesy of James Hyman Fine Art From the exhibition: Basil Beattie Onward and Upward 25 Years of Work (1986-2011) 11-16-2011 to 1-21-2012 Catalog available

"I wanted things that I couldn't at times articulate." Interior Landscape, 1964 Helen Frankenthaler, the lyrically abstract painter whose technique of staining pigment into raw canvas helped shape an influential art movement in the mid-20th century, and who became one of the most admired artists of her generation, died on Tuesday at her home in Darien, Conn. She was 83. - Grace Glueck, from the New York Times obituary   In the studio, 1957 In the studio, 1957 Installation shot: Small's Paradise, 1964. * Photographs above of Helen Frankenthaler in her studio by Burt Glinn (c) .

A quote by Charles Dickens, in Philip Guston's hand, tacked to the painter's studio wall.

On a recent trip to London I had the opportunity to take a look inside the studio of Karl Bielik . I first became aware of Bielik's work in 2010 and quickly came to admire the paintings' straight forward painterliness and unique vocabulary of mark and form. From Bielik's website , Statement: Working on a multitude of paintings at a time, Karl Bielik's brew of abstractions are developed in batches. Irregular canvases cover his studio walls and floors, where he shifts from one painting to another, experimenting playfully with mark making.  Formal lines taken from photographs and diagrams contrast loose oily wounds, thick emulsions offset light glazes and dribbles. Bielik fluctuates between techniques, pushing and challenging the paint until a kind of harmony is met.  In contrast to this emotive imagery, banal solitary words form Bielik's titles, tempering and balancing the melancholy character of his paintings; the result, a ...

Images above: details from Andrea by Robert Frank For my daughter Andrea who died in an Airplane crash at TICAL in Guatemala on Dec 23 last year. She was 21 years and she lived in this house and I think of Andrea every  Day

"I'm hoping to make a new thing for the world that remains in the mind like a new species of living thing." Head of J.Y.M., 1969 J.Y.M. Seated, 1986-87 To The Studio, 1982-83 Frank Auerbach , London 1962,photograph by  Lord Snowdon (c) "To put down an ideogram of a table so that people will recognize it as a table is not the work of a painter, but to sense it for a moment as a magic carpet with a leg hanging down at each corner is the beginning of a painter's imagination." Figure on a Bed, 1969 E.O.W. Half-Length Nude, 1958 Railway Arches, Bethnal Green II 1958-59 Frank Auerbach in his studio holding his picture of the building site on Earl's Court Road in 1953 Maples Demolition, 1960 Frank Auerbach  Portrait of Catherine Lampert  (1981-2) Head of E.O.W. 1955 (c) Photograph by Bob Collins "It seems to me madness to wake up in the morning and do something other than paint, considering that one may not wake up the following morning....