Every year we go to Chicago

Jami and her mother shop, her step-father hob nobs with toy soldier enthusiasts and I go I the Art Institute. Every one is happy. The Art Institute lets you photograph almost the entire collection. Here I have taken two photos of Pinkham Ryder's Essex Canal. Ryder is a pivotal artist for modern American painting. Pollack said that Ryder was the first American painter. Seemingly effusive praise, but accurate. Accurate in that I've felt, and I've gotten this feeling from my teachers and classmates, that Ryder's mindset, his ever straining attempt at the sublime, is where our painting should be. If I err in applying generous layers of paint and going at the same canvas again and again, it is because I believe in Ryder's project and his promise. I believe that painting should land right in the middle of the heart. It should grab a person by the guts. Painting should shake the spirit. In between these two reproductions is the actual color balance of the work. It is a rich seemingly simple landscape that is over painted but still lively. I can feel the wind blow in this painting. I can hear the absent water.
For a modern referent look at some of the later work of Howard Hodgkin.