Art

The Golden State

May 14, 2023

I hope this isn’t merely a dream I’m touring California and seeing fog soothe rocks by an ocean shore, lush trees shade a lake, a river glisten under clouds and sky, serene cows calm a meadow, an electric-orange sunset light exotic desert plants in the foreground, mountains overwhelm powerlines and trash in a pond, spring…

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Feud at LACMA

May 6, 2023

“Ladies, stop it,” I shout. “Shut up,” says the one to the left in a sleek black and gray striped dress baring arms, shoulders, and back. “You’re young and beautiful,” I say.  “Why are you doing this?” “You’re a fool to ask,” says the lady on the right attired in a black and gray polka-dotted…

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Byline: Ex-Slave Gordon

May 2, 2023

You’ve seen me.  You’ve seen me many times and would like to forget.  But you can’t.  I won’t let you.  More importantly, the people who did this wanted everyone to remember I belonged to them and when I escaped they and their bloodhounds chased me several days through mosquito-filled swamps and forests and dragged me…

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Painting in Color

June 7, 2020

Joe started drawing when he was very young. He drew horses, cartoons, Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger, airplanes, things he related to. He also liked drawing on walls and in coloring books. He wasn’t thinking of art as a career and never took classes or followed guidelines that someone has to declare him an artist…

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Drink the Giant Orange

February 17, 2019

I rush into the art museum and within minutes feel thirsty and hot and dizzy. I spot relief in a painting called Giant Orange topped by a tall orange and black sign and staffed by a pretty young lady inside a huge orange ball below. “Whaddya got to drink?” She looks at me as if…

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Iranian Art, David Hockney, and LACMA

June 26, 2018

Boyd, an art lover visiting California the first time in years, reads with increasing concern a two-sided handout titled: The Future at Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and waves the news at a museum employee. “What’s this? Almost half the galleries are closed and soon the others’ll be shuttered, too.” She smiles and says,…

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Parking Lot Painter

October 23, 2015

No one buys my oil paintings on canvas. No one buys my acrylics. No one buys my watercolors. No one hires me to paint murals. They’re all fools. I have great work crying to be seen, and I prove it every weekend at street painting festivals all over. We don’t actually paint. We draw, usually…

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Mental Steroids

June 28, 2015

A physician of renown I certainly am, though for a generation I have focused most of my intellect on the rather irrelevant albeit stimulating task of helping athletes run faster, jump higher, hit more home runs, and register more knockouts with shoulder pads and fists. Only in recent years have activists tried to persuade me…

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Art Appraisals

May 24, 2015

To an interviewer who asked Mick Jagger if he had any art, the slender septuagenarian said, well, I just have several paintings people have given me and a few I’ve bought, but it’s definitely not what you’d call a collection, and they (the bad guys) know that so they never bother coming to my place.…

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Grady Harp Reviews “Paint it Blue”

May 12, 2015

Amazon.com Hall of Fame reviewer Grady Harp recently posted this review on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com Paint it Blue by George Thomas Clark 7 of 7 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars Oh to be a fly on the wall…. May 6, 2015 By Grady Harp HALL OF FAME TOP 100…

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First Review of Paint it Blue

April 9, 2015

The first review of “Paint it Blue” has just been posted on Amazon.com, and I’m honored that painter and writer Peter Wood gave the book five stars. Here is the review: Most Helpful Customer Reviews 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful 5.0 out of 5 stars — Painters Exposed As Never Before!…

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Paint it Blue – Published

March 17, 2015

Paint it Blue, the long-anticipated collection of stories about painters, has been published and is now available. Introduction – We wonder what they’re thinking, so we ask Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera. And you, Picasso, what are you really like? Vincent van Gogh, please tell us more about your agony and inspiration. We must also…

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Elegant Quito Home of Maria Augusta Urrutia

August 31, 2012

I tell the taxi driver I’m looking for a splendid residence in downtown Quito, and he drives me into the historical center and to the home of Maria Augusta Urrutia. From outside, the house, though two tall stories, looks rather small and narrow, cramped by contiguous buildings, but upon entering I see a courtyard and…

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Garden Party for William H. Johnson

April 23, 2012

(A major feature about painter William H. Johnson, 1901-1970, will be posted later this spring.) I wish William H. Johnson, gifted painter of a unique world, were at this party honoring young African American artists, staged by the foundation bearing his name, at an elegant old two-story home near the Wilshire district in Los Angeles.…

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Party

January 16, 2012

at party naked couple hugs painting each other

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Orange Ladies

January 16, 2012

two mouths pout under hats above dresses sexy or mean better assume mean and sexy

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Amiri Baraka Clears Mind

January 14, 2012

decades ago when poet amiri baraka’s surname jones rebuked for obscenity by langston hughes in essay “that boy leroi” now almost eighty on stage with fiftyish daughter at hammer museum and can’t remember abstract impressionist painter who dripped jackson pollock she said and the mexican muralist my man diego rivera she said baraka generally lucid…

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Hemingway Fifty Years Dead

July 6, 2011

Early morning on a July second Ernest Hemingway, battered by decades of alcoholism, assailed by a brain injured in one car and two plane crashes, haunted by a lifelong fear of inherited mental illness and certain that it and rapid aging had forever rendered him paranoid and defeated, quietly arose from a bedroom separate from…

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Colossal Head and the Mesoamerican Ballgame

November 22, 2010

I know it’s not right by your standards but I don’t care about them or you, so my relentless almond eyes and flat ears, open and acute below the helmet on my Colossal Head 5, carved six-feet high into three tons of basalt, are aimed at viewers in museums who surround me on three sides.…

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Skipping Toll on the Golden Gate Bridge

August 9, 2010

Oh, what a foolish risk it was. It really should be illegal. I don’t know why it isn’t. All rational people understand it’s dangerous to drive while listening to Jim Morrison sing “Light My Fire.” Actually, I had been thoroughly reasonable all day, easing out of my motel in San Francisco and carefully driving through…

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