Patricia Watwood and Friends

Way back again to the start of my trip, I went to a talk organized by Patricia Watwood at the Forbes Galleries.

The talk was a panel discussion between Patricia, Nelson Shanks, Sabin Howard and Peter Trippi . I had a nice seat near the front and after a while began sketching. Sitting still for more than half an hour is a real trial . . . Obviously, they kept moving, Peter Trippi at the end in particular - while the others tended to go back to the same pose, he was always different. And the hands! They were absolutely fabulous, never stopping, very expressive - even when not talking. Odd that he was the one non-artist in the panel. He saw the sketch later (a very approachable chap) and didn't seem to disapprove too much.

It was Nelson Shanks (the first face in my sketch) whose viewpoint I understood most - he talked very much of the joy of painting what is in front of you and how expressive that can be, and how there will never be an end to the subjects to be painted. The others were more political and a lot of it went over my head - especially as I had not yet realised how very little representational art there is in NYC. It was a bit of a shock to me that my kind of art is seen by some as very old fashioned. But at the end of the day, does it matter? Only in the sense that the audience for my work may be smaller than I'd wish

Anyway, I got to meet Daniel Maidman, who introduced me to Joe Ongie (who is a big Raeburn fan), Nelson, Patricia and Peter, Karen Kaapcke (another great painter) and various other interesting folks. Wine was drunk, the party moved to the Salmagundi Club (which had a startling range of representational art on show, from the brilliant to the embarrassingly bad) and there was much talk of art amongst other things.

In the perfect world there would be many such meetings and we would all be better artists for them - it is hard to quantify how much talk enriches, but I have no doubt it does. Otherwise I wouldn't be blogging - so please comment, folks!