Influence

Influence is often hard for me to trace down, but then other times it parks itself right in the front of my mind and won't leave room for my own thoughts about the picture at hand or even painting in general.   I've recently been sending pictures and links to paintings to a friend who is just starting to look at art (that's what a trip to Paris will do!) and in those conversations I'm rediscovering some of the artists whose work has shaped mine:  Vermeer and the Dutch genre painters most obviously, but also Wilhelm Hammershoi, Thomas Dewing, Fairfield Porter.  (For me, like all painters, it's an enormous list, but the pictures I immediately thought to send were certainly the ones my own work is most indebted to.)

The Eckersberg below obviously affected the two Columns.  For the current series, I finally identified the painting that had been tickling my brain:  Lisa Gloria's Self Portrait as Ghost, which I've seen only online.  The pose is echoed in Black Slip 4, but (aside from the costume) it's the twinning of intimacy and detachment that drew me to the painting and resonated with my own work.  (All of Lisa's work is wonderful, especially The Washer and her drawings and paintings of young girls, her daughters I assume.  Her website is www.lisagloria.com and her blog is called painter on painting.  She's a thoughtful and interesting writer as well.)