Happy Summer Solstice, despite the dark clouds and difficulties of the combined natural and human caused stresses in our world right now. You Just Missed It ! is the painting-in-progress I'm working on as I try to navigate this upending of so many former assumptions about the past, the present and the future. The little slice of NYC revealed in the lower left is a view of 39th and 8th avenue in midtown Manhattan, also visible in my large oil 8th Avenue . In our former world, where there was an inexorable push to demolish older buildings and replace their intricate visual and historical texture with larger, shinier and more expensive iterations, the corner restaurant was one of the casualties, shortly after I took my reference photos. But now much of Manhattan is transformed, along with a lot of other places, and the economic ripples from the pandemic, our political nightmare and our recurring sad history of racism, sexism, injustice, intolerance and inequity are only just beginning to be felt.
Those twin desert hoodoos can be a metaphor: the harder "top rock" protected the softer "bottom rock" from eons of erosion that ground down everything else in it's path. And the wide open but isolated landscape of the desert is a magnificent tonic for being shut-in and sheltering-in-place. I lived in Albuquerque for a bit back in the early '70s, and my explorations and adventures out in the back-country made powerful impressions on me that I'm glad to be able to mine now...but it's up to you to figure out what you just missed !
In the midst of all this, we all have to find our ways to peacefully exist and prosper, and a big part of my long-range plan is to continue to make art. With so much happening around me, I need to process and react to the overload creatively. The rules and recommendations for distancing and isolation have reduced the opportunities for distraction and out-of-studio time, and I know a lot of artists who are more productive than they've been in a long time as a result. Thankfully, I've also had some really good news to offset the clouds, including selection by the Art in Embassies program of the US Department of State for inclusion in a group show at the US Embassy in Muscat, Oman, 2020-2023. Recently I've been notified I'm short-listed for a significant grant to be awarded in late summer, and I was also featured in an online exhibit at ABFA Gallery. The icing on the cake is that today on father's day both my sons are happily sailing on their offshore boats, one on each coast, and it's been great fun to help them restore and refit their vessels as I dig into my stash of marine hardware, connections and experience.
Stay safe and healthy, enjoy the relative quiet and solitude, and let's all work to come out of this with a renewed energy for doing good things in good ways !
My wonderful gallery representation: LewAllen Galleries, Santa Fe, NM
And as always, you can also contact me directly by email: info@sethtane.com and follow my occasional photo posts on: Instagram