Peter Saul's exploding America

Sometimes I feel like I'm living in Peter Saul's world. He's an artist drawn to the shocking and outrageous. He twirls everyday forms around his finger like a wedding ring; he's married to the wild explosion of surplus and junk in American life. A stellar show of his early work is on view at George Adams Gallery in Chelsea (through April 11). Saul's later work becomes more dayglo and provocative as it gets more character-based. In the early drawings, though, we see Saul beginning to grapple with comic books and highways and refrigerators while the art world was still in its abstract-expressionist hangover. Everyday objects tend towards the abstract and become occasions for whimsy and endless whirl.In some ways these drawings remind me of Antonioni's great finale to Zabriskie Point, where a brand new suburban home explodes in the American desert, sending all manner of consumer goods tumbling through the air to a Pink Floyd soundtrack (go to 3:30 in the video below for the explosions. Trust me: it's worth it).But where Antonioni is making a movie about the catastrophe of modern relationships that are intertwined with suburbia and consumerism, Saul is taking a bumpercar ride through their birth. Peter...

Must... post... more...

There's been a lull in my posting recently since the sweetest thing came into my life: Iris Ellington Swartz Turfle, my baby girl, born February 12. For all the cute pics of baby drooling, and adults drooling over a baby, check out my Flickr account. I'm sure loyal DG readers will understand why art blogging was one of the last things on my mind. That doesn't mean making art has gone to the back burner, however, as I've entered an extremely productive phase and have been very busy in the studio lately. I'll post pics soon of what's bubbling out in this very green time. And, as life with a newborn becomes more manageable, look forward to more regular posts here. In the meantime, I thought I'd share a great quote I found from an interview with Swedish film director Ingmar Bergman that relates to a lot of my past year in the studio. As the religious aspect of my existence was wiped out, life became much easier to live. Sartre said how inhibited he used to be as an artist and author, how he suffered because what he was doing wasn't good enough. By a slow intellectual process he...