About Painting Perceptions
The Painting Perceptions blog was started in early 2009 by Larry Groff to explore modernistic painting being done from life. Over time the blog became a vehicle for artists to present and discuss their ideas and work through the interview format. As of June 2012 we have interviewed well over 120 different painters, ranging from major painters showing in leading galleries to emerging artists just getting started. The emphasis has been on painters who work from life in some manner but over time the blog has grown to become as much about perceptions on painting as it is about perceptual painting. We examine a wide range of stylistic approaches from extremely loose abstraction to precise realism and everything in between.
Staff Writers
Elana Hagler email:elana@paintingperceptions.com
Elana Hagler was born in Tel Aviv, Israel, and immigrated to the United States at the age of five. She received her Bachelor of Arts in both Studio Art and Psychology from Brandeis University, Boston, and continued her studies for two years at the Master Class of the Jerusalem Studio School and the International School of Drawing, Painting, and Sculpture in Umbria, Italy. She then received her Master of Fine Arts from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts in Philadelphia. Elana has won multiple prizes in painting and drawing and has exhibited her work in solo and group exhibitions in New York City, Tel Aviv, Jerusalem, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Virginia, Florida, Colorado, Ohio, Michigan, Vermont, Massachusetts, and Italy. She has previously taught fine art at the Delaware College of Art and Design and at Swarthmore College. Elana is an instructor in the online program at the Academy of Art University in San Francisco.
Neil Plotkin email: neil@paintingperceptions.com
Neil Plotkin is an artist born and raised in Detroit, Michigan and currently living in New York City. His work is a means of exploring the world around us.
He has been exhibited nationally and internationally, both in solo shows and, by invitation, in shows such as the National Academy Museum’s Invitational Show in New York , and the “Take Home a Nude” auctions by Sotheby’s and Phillips de Pury. His work has been featured in publications such as Artinfo.com and Artist Magazine’s “20 artists under 40”. He is also currently working with the artist Vicky Colombet on her center piece of Enric Ruiz-Geli’s Villa Nurbs. Until June 2007, Neil worked both as an artist and as a designer of product ranges for Bloomingdale’s, New York. In response to his successes as an artist, Neil has left his career in design to focus full-time on painting.
Neil holds a Bachelor of Fine Arts and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from the University of Michigan.
Editor and Owner
Larry Groff email: larry@paintingperceptions.com
The blog was started by myself, Larry Groff, the editor and owner. I’m a San Diego based painter who lived in Boston most of my life, where I studied with the leading perceptual painter, George Nick. (BFA at Mass Art ’88 and MFA at Boston University ’93) I am not an art scholar, critic or even a good writer, I’d rather be painting. Since I don’t teach and I live in a location that is isolated from much of the art-world, I wanted to give something back. I feel it is important to help pass on the type of information I was able to learn in school but is increasingly difficult for art students to receive today: Good information about painting written from the painter’s perspective.
Over the past few decades, art publications and art schools have increasingly de-emphasized traditional figurative art training and now focus much more on art theory and fashion. The formal concerns of figurative painting often gets short shrift compared to the narrative politics of the subject matter. Many students leave art school with little idea about what makes a good painting in any historically formal sense. The best place to get this information is from the painters themselves. However, much of the painter’s poetry is visual rather than verbal, naturally that’s why most artist catalogs are written by professional writers. Poets are essential to surround the art with words but the painter can talk about the abstract structure and design, the color relationships, spacial dynamics, drawing issues, and many more such concerns that might help insure knowledge about making great art continues to be passed down in however many generations humanity has left.
My hope for this blog is to encourage other painters or art lovers to submit articles, reviews, interviews and what ever else may be of relevant interest. I would love to see it evolve into a useful resource and community of like-minded people. In practical terms I hope to use this blog to not only talk about other painters who work from observation but also to discuss anything related to painting from life. I plan to have articles and reviews as well as interviewing painters, interview podcasts, video when possible and relevant, articles on technique, reviews of painting supplies, and more. I would like to thank two staff writers, Elana Hagler and Neil Plotkin, both terrific painters and interviewers who’ve made significant contributions towards helping this site become a valuable resource and destination for painters around the world.
Portrait of Larry Groff by George Nick, 6/1987
