Carnival

How do I capture the excitement of Carnival in color?

The answer is simple—I lived it.

The rhythms I play are transferred directly to the canvas. I know what it feels like to stand in a stadium and let the music move through me, to feel the beat penetrate every soul in the crowd. That pulse, that vibration, that shared electricity—it doesn’t end when the music stops. It becomes color. It becomes movement. It becomes paint.

Carnival is happiness unleashed. It is joy rising from the body and spilling into the air. When I paint, I return to that space. And if I’m lucky—if I’m truly in the zone—that energy flows from memory to brushstroke, from rhythm to color.

The feel.
The vibe.
The soul.

In living color.

That’s His Story.Not my Story- SunRa

Much Thanks to All!

Some people see Pollock in this series. Fair enough.

I work in many styles—and sometimes they all show up at once.

What’s harder to see in a photo is how layered these paintings really are. There’s a lot of preparation, a lot of steps, a lot of decisions along the way. If you spend time with them, you’ll find portraits, landscapes, animals, spirits, stories—sometimes all in the same piece.

So, when someone jumps to a quick label, I get curious. That reaction often says more about our need to categorize than it does about the work itself. What’s happening on the surface—and underneath it—comes from a different set of movements, questions, and choices.

If we followed labels all the way to their conclusion, every landscape would trace back to one origin, every portrait would feel like an echo, every jazz musician playing a standard would be called repetition instead of renewal. But art doesn’t move like that. It moves through variation, listening, response—through stories unfolding in real time

As Sun Ra said, “That’s his story, not my story.”

In The Next Life

I rarely know what I will paint next, or even what style it will take. I don’t plan it. I don’t overthink it. I simply follow the current and trust where it carries me. Sometimes I remain within a series for a while, staying with it until it has said everything it needs to say. Then, without warning, comes the urge to leap—into something entirely unexpected, often far outside the familiar. That’s how my creative process works: instinct first, direction later.

Over the years, I’ve been told many times that I must have been a painter in a past life. I never gave that idea much weight. But as I grow older, I find myself returning to it with a quiet smile, wondering if perhaps it’s true. And if it is, I hope—with all my heart—that in the next life, I’ll be one again.

Toward a Living Community of Perception

Artist Statement: Toward a Living Community of Perception

André Martinez-Reed

My work grows from a conviction that art is not primarily a cultural product, but a mode of perception. I do not approach painting as commentary or illustration, but as a practice of attention—an effort to remain receptive to inner movement and to give it form without forcing explanation. For me, art begins before language, in a state of listening that resists haste and resists certainty.

I write as a practicing artist, not as a historian, critic, or cultural manager. I write from within the very contradictions Mark Tobey named so clearly in his essay Art and Community—contradictions that remain almost unchanged today. Tobey’s influence on my thinking has been both practical and ethical. He insisted that art arises from inward necessity rather than intellectual ambition or cultural fashion, and that insistence feels even more urgent now than in his time.

Modern society generates enormous activity around art: lectures, readings, panels, institutions, degrees, archives. Yet alongside this abundance of discourse, there is often a striking scarcity of artists—by which I mean not people who produce objects, but people allowed the conditions necessary to truly see. Artists today are frequently asked to explain themselves before they are allowed to look. Intuition is tolerated only after it has been translated into approved language. Silence is suspect. The inward life—the true source of art—is treated as insufficient unless externally validated.

My work resists that reversal. I am less interested in arriving at conclusions than in sustaining a state of listening. Process matters more than assertion. Meaning is not imposed; it accumulates slowly through repeated looking, patience, and trust in perception. When art is over-determined by language, it loses its capacity to function as lived experience. I believe art regains its vitality when it is permitted to remain partially unknown—even to the artist.

I am equally concerned with the position of the viewer. Many people desire direct contact with art but have been trained, often unconsciously, to distrust their own responses. They defer instead to authorities, histories, critics, and frameworks. While knowledge has value, it cannot substitute for encounter. An extensive education in art history may provide a magnificent scholastic approach yet still leave the eyes unopened while the mouth repeats names, dates, and accepted interpretations. Composition, color, and form are discussed endlessly, while the living experience of seeing remains distant.

This is not a failure of intelligence, but a failure of trust. Tobey understood that art is not entered through accumulation, but through exposure—through risk, vulnerability, and sustained attention. My work aims to reopen that space: to invite engagement before explanation, and to allow meaning to remain provisional. I hope the viewer feels permitted to stand in front of the work without needing to arrive anywhere.

That Mark Tobey found fuller recognition outside his own country remains instructive. It reflects a broader cultural difficulty in accommodating work that is inward, slow, and resistant to immediate clarity. His international recognition—particularly in Europe—stood in contrast to the hesitations he encountered at home, not because his work was obscure, but because it refused easy explanation. This was not a rejection of America, but a quiet revelation of its impatience.

Yet this history does not lead me to pessimism. On the contrary, it clarifies the task. The conditions Tobey described persist because the need they address is permanent. People still hunger for meaning, coherence, and participation in something larger than themselves. What is missing is not desire, but permission—permission to look slowly, to feel without instruction, to trust one’s own perception.

I see art as a quiet form of resistance: resistance to speed, to over-articulation, and to the belief that understanding must always precede experience. But it is also an offering. When art functions as perception rather than product, it creates the possibility of a different kind of community—one formed not around agreement or expertise, but around shared attention.

Such a community cannot be efficiently organized. It emerges gradually, when artists are allowed to work inwardly and viewers are allowed to meet the work directly. In this sense, art is not separate from community; it is one of the ways community remembers how to see.

If my work succeeds, it does so not by persuading or instructing, but by holding attention—long enough for something essential to surface. In that sustained moment of looking, I believe art still has the power Tobey recognized: not to explain the world, but to deepen our presence within it.

Art and Community, Unchanged

Introduction: André Martinez-Reed

I write this as a practicing artist, not a historian, critic, or cultural manager. I write from the position of someone who has lived inside the contradictions Mark Tobey described so clearly decades ago—and which remain, almost untouched, today.

I have long admired Tobey not only for his work, but for the clarity of his thinking and the courage of his independence. He understood, earlier than most, that American culture was in danger of confusing activity with vitality, information with insight, and education with initiation. He also understood the personal cost of refusing to conform to those confusions.

That Tobey found his deepest recognition outside his own country is not incidental. It is emblematic. Like many American artists of genuine inward commitment, he had to step beyond national expectations to be seen clearly. His international recognition—particularly in Europe—stood in quiet contrast to the hesitations and misunderstandings he faced at home. This was not because his work was obscure, but because it resisted easy explanation.

I offer the following essay in the spirit of Mark Tobey’s Art and Community, not as an update or correction, but as a confirmation. Nothing essential has changed. The same forces remain in place, and the same losses continue to occur—often unnoticed, sometimes even celebrated.

Art and Community, Unchanged

When Mark Tobey wrote Art and Community, he described a condition that still defines much of contemporary cultural life: great activity surrounding art, paired with a startling scarcity of artists. In countries like America, where paths to culture are consciously organized through lectures, readings, panels, institutions, and credentials, there is endless discussion of art and remarkably little space for its actual emergence.

Culture is pursued the way one acquires a commodity. People rush to obtain it—quickly, efficiently, visibly—in much the same way they buy a coat. In this rush, the artist is often startled, even frightened, driven metaphorically into the woods. Not by hostility, but by an overwhelming emphasis on the mental side of things: explanations, classifications, relevance, theory. Art is asked to justify itself before it is allowed to exist.

This condition has intensified rather than diminished. Today the artist is expected to speak fluently about their work, situate it within approved frameworks, and demonstrate awareness of prevailing discourse. Intuition is tolerated only after it has been translated into acceptable language. Silence is suspect. The inward life—the true source of art—is treated as insufficient unless externally validated.

At the same time, a great many people remain uninitiated. This is not due to a lack of desire. On the contrary, there is a widespread longing to encounter art directly, firsthand. But existing educational methods too often check this impulse rather than liberate it. People are guided away from their own perceptions and toward secondhand understanding. They are taught what to think before they are taught how to see.

Art clubs, societies, and schools frequently form barriers to native contact. They promise access, but deliver mediation. An extensive course in art history may provide a magnificent scholastic approach, yet it often leaves the eyes unopened while the mouth parrots names, dates, movements, and the opinions of critics and authorities. Composition, color, form—these are discussed endlessly, while the living experience of painting remains distant and abstract.

This is not a failure of intelligence, but a failure of trust. Tobey understood that art is not entered through accumulation of knowledge, but through direct exposure—through risk, vulnerability, and sustained attention. When education substitutes explanation for encounter, it produces fluency without perception. People learn to speak about art while remaining fundamentally untouched by it.

Community, under these conditions, becomes artificial. It gathers around discourse rather than experience, around agreement rather than attention. The artist, sensing this, retreats—not out of contempt, but out of necessity. The solitude Tobey described was not an escape from responsibility, but the only remaining space where inward work could survive.

Nothing has changed because the same misunderstanding persists: that culture can be transmitted primarily through the intellect. Tobey argued instead for a culture rooted in perception, where art serves as a shared field of awareness rather than an object of analysis. Such a community cannot be efficiently organized. It emerges slowly, when people are allowed to meet art before it is explained to them.

That Tobey himself had to leave America to be fully recognized is a telling fact. His work, deeply spiritual yet rigorously disciplined, did not align comfortably with American expectations of visibility, productivity, or clarity. Abroad, particularly in Europe, his commitment to inner necessity was more readily understood as strength rather than evasiveness. This was not a rejection of America, but a quiet indictment of its cultural impatience.

The persistence of Tobey’s relevance is not nostalgic. It is diagnostic. We still privilege explanation over presence, structure over sensitivity, authority over experience. We still create institutions that manage art rather than protect its conditions. And we still risk losing artists—not because they disappear, but because they are never allowed to fully form.

The task Tobey identified remains unfinished. Art continues to ask for courage: the courage to trust perception, to allow silence, and to let community arise from shared attention rather than shared language. Until that courage is widely practiced, art will remain surrounded by activity, and starved of life.

There Comes A Time

There comes a moment in life when things move beyond your control—when the only choice is to let go and cross over. In painting, as in music, that crossing is exhilarating. You are no longer directing; you become the conduit.

What first appears is beauty, then strangeness, and finally a quiet clarity—the sense of a mission, a quest. It’s beyond anything you imagined, yet it is the sum of all that you are, and something more. Every style, every approach you’ve ever explored is released, allowed to work together in a kind of quiet magic.

Once you arrive and truly step on board, the thrill never stops. The work deepens. The meaning grows richer, more revealing with time. And the spirit—whatever name you give it—arrives only when it chooses, never when you demand it.

It sounds crazy.
But it’s true.

The Invocation of Magic

Miró said, “Painting is the invocation of magic.” I believe it because I’ve felt it. Magic isn’t something you add to a canvas—it’s something you enter. A space that opens only when you’re quiet enough to step inside. That’s why I choose solitude. Reverence for a greater cause. This is the invocation, and once you’re there, it’s a wonderful place to be.

When I paint, it must have rhythm, feel, spirit. It must cross the line from object to being—become a living soul with a heart. Light and darkness are not enemies; darkness gives light its depth, and light gives darkness its meaning. A dear friend once said to me, “The difference between a masterpiece and a painting is one stroke.” He was right.

The same is true in music—especially in jazz, where freedom is earned, not accidental. Listen to Cecil Taylor with the Orchestra of Two Continents live in Warsaw Poland https://www.andremartinezmusic.com/. It isn’t chaos. It’s precision without restraint. A structure so internalized. Not one note, not one beat, is out of place from start to finish.

As his drummer, I had to be in the zone from the first stroke to the last,.. knowing when to play, when to change, when to drop out, when to swing, when to add color, when to lift the band, and when to disappear. That same awareness lives in painting. Knowing when to act and when to let the work breathe. When to assert yourself—and when to blend in.

That’s the magic I live for in everything I do. You either enter that space, or you don’t. And once the magic is gone, no amount of effort can force it back. You may spend a lifetime searching for it again. When it moves on, you must move too carrying the wonder with you, channeling it into something new.

So, I live.
And I wonder.
And I wonder.
And I wonder.

Thank you so much

Thank you so much to everyone who has shown support. I truly appreciate it.

To those who reacted strongly to my latest series and rushed to compare it to Pollock, it made me pause and reflect. It reminded me of how artists like Janet Sobel, Mark Tobey, Norman Lewis, and others must have felt when their work was overlooked, overshadowed by publicity and the constant search for a single “hero.” That pattern is worth questioning.

It also brought to my mind the quiet hint Norman Rockwell left us in The Connoisseur — a reminder that abstraction can be beautiful, meaningful, and worthy of serious consideration. That’s how I’ve always seen it.

These reflections are what inspire me. Not imitation. Not mythology. I don’t get fooled easily. I’m a fighter, and I stand by my work.

I currently have over 250 paintings from this series, and I look forward to sharing them with you. If there is an influence I openly admire, it is Josef Albers and his fearless experimentation with color relationships. Exploring color comes naturally to me and is an essential part of this much-discussed series.

So be it. Fortunately for me, I’ve never fully accepted what I was told I should believe. I prefer to discover things on my own. I always have.

Red, White, and Blue — Fragments of What Once Was

I learned color long before I ever held a brush.
I learned it on Court Street,
where neighborhoods touched like wet paint—
Cobble Hill, Brooklyn Heights, Downtown Brooklyn, Boerum Hill—
no hard edges, only borders that bled into one another
and became something richer.

Red was the pulse of the streets—
working hands, loud laughter, scraped knees,
the fire of Puerto Rican, Caribbean, African American,
Italian, Polish, Irish, Greek, Portuguese,
Syrian, Felipino, Jewish, American Indian lives
beating in rhythm.

White was not emptiness—
it was the space we made for one another,
the chalk lines on a football field,
the church basement where uniforms were born,
the quiet belief that we belonged together.

Blue was loyalty—
sweat-soaked jerseys, shared victories,
brothers playing both sides of the ball,
no cheerleaders, only neighborhood girls
and a coach who saw possibility
where others saw limits.

We faced teams built on separation—
all white, all Black, funded, polished, loud—
and still we stood, small and mighty,
because unity is the strongest color there is.
We won not because we matched,
but because we blended.

Today, when the world fractures its palette,
when colors are told to stay in their corners,
my heart breaks—
because I have already seen the masterpiece
that happens when they don’t.

In my painting, no color is forbidden.
Each carries purpose.
Each holds a soul.
I trust them to find one another,
the way we once did—
instinctively, beautifully,
forever changed.

When Dumbo Was Still a Dream

 Back in 2004, before DUMBO became a brand and a destination, it was still a question mark—a rough, echoing promise along the East River. That was the moment when I had an idea, and more importantly, the courage to act on it.

Opening a gallery there wasn’t simple. There were forms to fill out, questions to answer, assurances to make—almost like a test of faith. With that leap, Gregg Principato, a renowned cinematographer for major films and television, and I opened the Henry Gregg Gallery. Gregg soon had to step away as his film work pulled him back into demanding schedules, but the gallery had already taken its first breath and received a Proclamation from the Borough President of Brooklyn.

With my wife by my side and the unwavering help of my dear friend Jason Candler, Nola Zirin and Josua Wolfe I kept going.

We weren’t alone. We were part of something electric. Alongside us were the galleries of 111 Front Street—5 Plus 5, Howard Schickler Gallery, Gloria Kennedy, AIR, Klompching Gallery, Robert Wilson, Wessel O’Connor Fine Art, SEED Gallery, and many others. Together, we helped transform DUMBO into a worldwide destination for contemporary art—not through marketing plans or venture capital, but through belief, risk, and relentless work.

Over the years, the Henry Gregg Gallery welcomed thousands of visitors and hosted more than forty exhibitions. Even now, I look back at the comments in the sign-in books. They remind me why we never gave up. We were onto something real.

And then, slowly, the tide turned.

One by one, the galleries disappeared—not from lack of vision, but to make room for the next invasion: tech. Our entire floor, once buzzing with openings, conversations, and creative tension, was demolished and reborn as an Equinox gym. I was one of the last to close. What had been a vibrant artistic ecosystem briefly became a desert—caught in the in-between.

Those years were filled with unforgettable moments. Artists I gave shows to. Shows that deserved more than they received. I learned a hard truth: no matter how strong the work, the artist alone does not determine success. The system is not built to reward integrity—it often works against it. Still, I kept trying, until I finally went broke.

And then something shifted.

When the gallery closed, everything I had poured outward—energy, belief, advocacy—collapsed inward. That experience plunged me fully into my own art. All of it—the struggle, the exhaustion, the joy, the loss—had to go somewhere, and it went into the work itself.

What had once been curatorial vision became personal language. The same instincts that guided me in choosing artists and bodies of work now guide my own practice. The discipline, the risk-taking, the refusal to compromise—those years rewired how I make art.

I had given many artists beautiful, carefully curated exhibitions. Visitors, locals and tourists alike, responded with enthusiasm and recognition. The shows were praised not because they followed trends, but because they were honest.

It was beautiful work. And it was brutal work.

The press releases. The pickups and drop-offs. The rent, the bills. The wine and hors d’oeuvres. The endless preparation. Somehow, we kept fighting the urge to quit.

The greatest pleasure—always—was choosing the artist and the work. Standing in front of a body of work and knowing it mattered. Nothing else counted. Not résumés. Not trends. Just the work itself.

That belief defined the Henry Gregg Gallery. And it defines my art now.

When my wife and I finally closed the gallery, it took years to rebuild what we had given—financially, emotionally, creatively—with very little monetary return. But the gallery was never about profit. It was an act of love. A long, stubborn vision for art and for artists.

Over the years, we were honored to show extraordinary artists and photographers, including Anthony Almeida, Nola Zirin, Robert Herman, Fernand D’Onofrio, Scott Endsley, Serena Bocchino, Joan Rubin, Eleanor Schimmel, Michael Price, Peter Essex, Phillip Sugden, John Elder, Tony Velez, Michael Brennan, Julian Jackson, Melissa Meyer, Judith Nilison, Ed Levekis, Pedro Antonio Abreau, Anne Froudal, Doug Schwab, Igor Malijevsky, Mark Blanchette, Istvan Soltesz, Carole Elchert, Bryce Lankard, Balazs Turay, Peter Bellamy, Nestor Madelenagiotia, Sam Clayton, Richard Warvo, Dr. Temple Grandin, Christophe Pillault, Juan Sanchez-Juarez, John Ferro, Carol Bruns, Ai Ohkawara, Helen Brough, Joan Grubin, Alice Plush, Charles Denson, Frank Lind, Susan Sauebrun, Robert Sagerman, Gary Braasch, Ashely Cooper, Benjamin Drummond, Steve Kazlowski, Andre Cypriano, Marcos Andandia, Dr. David Parker, Nad Wolinska, Phillip Rubinow Jacobsen,Ivo Perelman, Rafael Leonardo Black, Bobby K. Hill Scott Weingarten, William Claps, Christopher Wynter—and many others.

To sum up those years, when we closed, I received a final notice—unexpected, generous, and deeply affirming:
https://www.andremartinezmusic.com/curated-shows-details.php?id=40

It made it all worth it.

Because even if the walls are gone and the neighborhood has changed, the work remains. What we built didn’t disappear—it transformed. Everything that experience demanded of me eventually returned, reshaped, through the art itself.

Those years were not an ending. They were a long apprenticeship—one that taught me how to see, how to endure, and how to trust the work above all else. The gallery was the proving ground. What followed became the practice.

The ideas that began there never stopped growing. They have been accumulating quietly, patiently, for years—waiting for the right moment, the right scale, and the right conditions to exist again.

And when they do, the work will speak not just for me, but for that entire vanished ecosystem of artists, risk-takers, and believers who once stood at the edge of the river and said yes.

That exhibition is still ahead.
It has been years in the making.

A Quiet Catalyst: Norman Rockwell’s The Connoisseur

A Quiet Catalyst: Norman Rockwell’s  The Connoisseur

There is an unlikely moment that sits at the origin of this entire inquiry, and it does not come from within the canon of Abstract Expressionism. It comes from Norman Rockwell.

Rockwell’s 1943 painting The Connoissuer  is often treated as a curiosity—an illustration, a joke, a polite commentary on modern art from the outside. But for me, it was neither peripheral nor humorous. It was catalytic. That painting lit the light bulb in my brain.

That neutrality is what struck me. Rockwell was not invested in myth. He was not performing ideology. He was asking a question—quietly, visually, and without agenda: What are we actually looking at? And more importantly, how do we decide what matters?

What stunned me was how much more intellectually open that painting felt than decades of abstract dogma that followed it. Rockwell—so often dismissed by modernist narratives—managed to frame the central tension between abstraction and representation with greater honesty than many who claimed to be revolutionaries. He acknowledged difference without collapsing into propaganda.

That moment stayed with me. It planted a question that would not go away. What happens when abstraction is freed from the need to perform rebellion? What happens when gesture is no longer required to prove freedom? What happens when abstraction is allowed to be judged not by myth, but by perception, intelligence, and coherence?

That single image initiated a journey that has now stretched across many years and more than 250 large-scale paintings—each 60 x 60 inches and growing—devoted to exploring this territory. This ongoing series is not an argument againstabstraction. It is an argument for its maturation. Each canvas is an attempt to test what abstraction can become when it is relieved of inherited expectations and allowed to stand on its own perceptual and structural terms.

Rockwell did not offer answers. He offered clarity. And in doing so, he revealed something crucial: that abstraction does not need to shout to be serious, and it does not need to abandon intelligence to claim freedom. That realization became the foundation of my work.

The series that followed is my response—not to Rockwell himself, but to the openness of that moment. It is a sustained inquiry into how abstraction can evolve when it is no longer defended by ideology or myth, but earned through attention, discipline, and time.

Sound Before Consensus: Lessons from Cecil Taylor

The same principles that revealed themselves to me through Rockwell’s Concrete & Abstraction were already at work in my life long before they reached the canvas—through sound.

When I began working with Cecil Taylor, I encountered a parallel situation to the one that would later shape my thinking about abstraction. Cecil followed his own sound with uncompromising conviction. He did not adjust his language to be understood quickly, nor did he soften it to fit existing categories. The controversy surrounding his music was not incidental—it was the result of an audience trained to expect familiarity rather than inquiry.

As a drummer within that world, I faced the same pressures. The expectations placed on rhythm—timekeeping, support, predictability—were deeply ingrained. But Cecil’s music demanded something else entirely. It required listening at a structural level, responding to energy rather than formula, and understanding rhythm as a living architecture rather than a grid. Freedom in that context was not expressive excess; it was responsibility. Every sound mattered.

Much like abstraction, Cecil’s music was often dismissed as chaotic by those unwilling to engage it closely. Yet beneath the surface was extraordinary rigor—density, counterpoint, variation, and long-form development that only revealed itself over time. You could not arrive at understanding through speed. You had to stay.

I stayed for over a decade.

That commitment led to a sustained exploration of sound—through performances, recordings, and concerts that were not merely endured but ultimately recognized. What began as controversy matured into critical acclaim. The work did not change to meet consensus; consensus shifted through exposure, persistence, and depth. The music proved itself not through explanation, but through time.

This experience shaped my understanding of abstraction more profoundly than any theoretical text. It taught me that innovation does not require permission, that clarity does not always arrive immediately, and that endurance is inseparable from seriousness. It also taught me that the most honest work often appears threatening—not because it lacks structure, but because its structure is unfamiliar.

When I paint, I carry this knowledge with me. Gesture must earn its place, as sound did. Rhythm must function, not posture. Complexity must be lived into, not declared. Just as Cecil’s music demanded a new way of listening, abstraction demands a new way of seeing—one that resists shortcuts and refuses premature judgment.

The decade I spent inside that music reaffirmed what Rockwell’s painting first suggested: that real inquiry exists outside consensus, that controversy is often a sign of integrity, and that the deepest work reveals itself only through sustained engagement.

What I learned as a drummer—about time, restraint, density, and form—now governs my approach to painting. The canvas, like the bandstand, is not a place for demonstration. It is a place for listening.

The Signs of Spring

From the window, I watch the earth stir,
A hush fills the air, the quiet before the bloom,
Emerald whispers brush against the sky,
As if the world itself is stretching,
Reaching toward the light, toward the color,
Where warmth and cold meet in the dance of contrast.
Each petal that unfurls carries a memory,
A melody painted in hues too soft, too bright.
Rhythms of green, bursts of violet and gold,
A symphony composed by the hands of the earth,
Where every stroke is emotion,
And every color, a story waiting to be told.

The Splendor of Nature

As we step into a new year, I’m filled with gratitude, wonder, and renewed energy as I introduce a major body of work—one that has been quietly growing for over three decades.

Splendor of the Seasons began more than 30 years ago in my own yard. At the time, it was nothing but grass. Little by little, I began planting trees—many kinds, many intentions. Over the years they grew, some reaching 40 to 50 feet tall. What unfolded was far more than a landscape. It became a living, breathing experience.

The true gift wasn’t just watching the trees grow, but witnessing the rhythm of the four seasons and the transformations each one brought. The music of leaves rustling in the wind. The beauty of their fall. The strength and movement during storms. Autumn arriving with seeds and abundance. The communities each tree creates through the fruit it bears.

There is beauty when the trees are full, and beauty when they stand bare. Beauty in snowfall, in silence, in motion. These moments—these years—became my teachers.

This new series is about that journey. The experience of time passing. The colors, the changes, the rhythms, the growth, the patterns. The life that gathers: the birds, the bees, the ants, the squirrels, the cats, the hawks, the woodpeckers, the pigeons, the cardinals, the grackles. All of it is there.

This body of work now includes over 250 paintings—and it continues to grow. Each piece is large, immersive, and far more glorious in person than any photograph could ever capture.

As this new year begins, I share this work with joy and gratitude—for nature, for time, and for the beauty that reveals itself when we choose to stay, observe, and grow.

What A World This Would Be

This past year has shown us, with unforgiving clarity, the world we have become.
Not broken by one single flaw but worn thin by how far we’ve drifted from value, from balance, from plain common sense.

Sensationalism roars louder than truth, faster than thought, and value is bartered away until it barely recognizes itself.

We live in a world racing toward the future at reckless speed, while deterioration creeps in from the opposite end. Progress without purpose. Growth without grounding.
Pulled apart from every direction, stretched until something must give.

So, we stand before the question:
Do we wait for the wheel to turn full circle and crush itself under its own weight?

Or do we step back, take the bull by the horns, and steady the chaos long enough to rethink, to rebuild, to restructure the way we live together?

Perhaps that pause is what we need most. A breath. A moment of stillness.
A chance to ask not just where we are going, but why. A chance to rebuild systems meant to serve people, not consume them.

Imagine that world. No constant worry. No famine. No war. No hate.
No corporate rip-offs ticking away every minute of every day.
Fair exchange is no robbery. Fair banks. Fair laws. Fair prices.

A world where value has worth again, where honesty is not a disadvantage, and fairness is not a weakness.

It may sound like a dream.
But dreams are where better worlds are born.
And if each of us does our part—however small it may seem—we don’t have to wait for destruction to teach us the lesson.

We can choose to learn now.

Oh, what a world that would be—for us, and for generations yet to come.

No Pain….No Gain

No pain, no gain.
Today, I see a profound disconnection from the practices of the past. Many people believe they can bypass skill and still achieve great art. It isn’t possible.

Today, art is often taught as theory before practice, credentials before mastery, and approval before courage. Students are asked to explain their work before they’ve truly lived it. Institutions define what is “good,” what is “relevant,” and what will be rewarded—often shaping artists to fit systems rather than shaping humans to discover their craft.

The Renaissance worked differently. An artist was first an apprentice. You learned by doing—by sweeping floors, grinding pigments, mixing plaster, carving wood, stretching canvas, and watching the master’s hands move. You learned patience before recognition. Skill before style. Craft before concept. Knowledge was earned through repetition, failure, endurance, and time.

There were no shortcuts. No titles without proof. Your education lived in your hands, your body, your discipline. Pain was part of the process—not suffering for its own sake, but the necessary resistance that builds strength, precision, and understanding.

Today, many are taught to chase visibility, trends, and validation. In the Renaissance, artists chased mastery. The work itself was the credential.

Back then, art was inseparable from architecture, music, engineering, and labor. Artists understood structure, rhythm, weight, balance, and proportion because they built, played, and worked alongside other craftsmen. Art was not isolated—it was integrated into life.

That path still exists.

True learning does not come from permission. It comes from commitment. From mentors who demand excellence. From hours no one sees. From work that humbles you before it frees you.

This is not nostalgia. It is remembrance. There are many ways to become an artist—but mastery has always required the same things: time, humility, discipline, and love for the work itself.

The Renaissance never ended.
It simply stopped being taught.

Gathering of The Most High

Under a canopy of stars and rising moons, the planetary citizens assemble, drawn from every corner of Earth, as a hum of unity vibrates through the air. People of every shape, color, and culture stand shoulder to shoulder, faces lifted to the sky, hands outstretched in unison, offering their collective energy to the planet they’ve called home. Their eyes shimmer with hope, their hearts beating in sync with the pulse of the Earth itself.

They have come together, not out of obligation, but out of love—for the world, for the future, for one another. The atmosphere crackles with a newfound sense of purpose. The sky above is aglow with swirling constellations, the heavens reflecting the unity of those below.

From the soil of a recovering earth, a new beginning rises, fed by the labor of those who dare to care. They speak not with words, but with action—each individual a vessel for change, carrying the responsibility of stewardship in their hands, their hearts, their souls.

As the gathering grows, it becomes clear that this is not just a moment in time—it is the turning point, the birth of a new era. The world has been wounded, but it is not beyond healing. Together, they rise to restore the balance. The most high has no crown, no throne—it sits in the hearts of those who are willing to make the sacrifice for the future of the planet. This is their calling. Their promise.

The Earth listens.

Thought for Today

Thought for Today

The battle between light and darkness never ends.
At times, it may seem as though the darkness is overtaking the world—
but as the saying goes, “If you want to make God laugh, tell Him your plans.”

It’s said that Camille Pissarro once told Paul Gauguin:
“There are many rich men who, when they die, people will say,
‘He was a great and clever man.’
Yet with time, their names fade into the wind.
The creators who give freely to the universe—
the universe never forgets.”

That thought has always stayed with me.
I think of the great artists whose spirits still live through their work,
long after they are gone.
For while greed builds monuments to the self,
art builds bridges to eternity.

And when I see the madness and greed at work in the world today,
I can’t help but wonder—
when those who chase only power and wealth reach their peak,
will they recognize what they’ve truly become?

Because in the end, it’s not the fortune that endures,
but the soul that gives something meaningful to the world.

Beyond the White Walls: Rediscovering the Soul of Art

In today's art world, something essential seems to be slipping through the cracks. Galleries, museums, and major institutions — once sanctuaries of the unexpected — now often resemble well-oiled machines, turning out a familiar rhythm of safe, market-friendly work. There is brilliance still, without question. But far too often, we are being fed the same loop: polished, theoretical, and strategically curated art that feels more like product than pulse.

This isn't to blame the artists themselves. Many are simply doing what the system asks of them. Professionalism, after all, is now part of the artistic journey — degrees, residencies, networks, and the right vernacular. But in pursuing legitimacy, something raw and real can get lost. When art becomes a career path more than a compulsion — when it serves gatekeepers before it serves truth — we risk sidelining the very spirit that makes art transformative.

Art is not just an aesthetic exercise. It’s rebellion. It’s introspection. It’s culture, trauma, hope, memory — translated into a visual or physical language. And yet, much of what rises to the surface today is curated not by urgency or originality, but by what aligns with institutional comfort zones. It's not about creativity alone, but about familiarity: work that references work that references work, all carefully stamped with approval.

Meanwhile, in the shadows, something else is happening.

Artists outside the spotlight — without MFAs, without gallery representation, without perfect statements — are creating with a kind of freedom that cannot be taught. In garages, on city walls, across obscure corners of the internet and in underrepresented communities, powerful work is being made that may never see a white wall or glossy catalog. And perhaps that’s where its power lies.

This is not a rejection of all institutions, nor a dismissal of rigor, critique, or discourse. These are valuable. But we must ask: What voices are missing? Who decides what’s valuable? What kinds of work are we not seeing — not because it lacks merit, but because it lacks proximity to power?

Real art has no guidelines. It doesn't wait to be validated. It stirs, disturbs, heals, and questions — often in ways that the mainstream is slow to catch up to. If we want to experience art that truly expands our view of the world and ourselves, we need to be willing to look beyond the conveyor belt. To unlearn our assumptions about what “serious” art looks like. To listen more, and frame less.

This is not an attack. It's an invitation.

An invitation to gallery owners to take more risks. To collectors to seek out the unpolished. To institutions to decenter themselves. To artists to remember that they don’t need permission. And to all of us — as viewers, thinkers, and citizens — to question the systems we’ve been handed.

The soul of art is still alive. It's just not always where we’re told to look.

Rethinking Jackson Pollock: Myth, Mediation, and New Possibilities in Abstraction

 Rethinking Jackson Pollock: Myth, Mediation, and New Possibilities in Abstraction

Contemporary culture increasingly privileges speed over deliberation. Across disciplines, ideas are often absorbed and repeated rather than examined, while challenges to established narratives are met with immediate reaction instead of sustained inquiry. The reluctance to question—fueled by fear of rejection, misunderstanding, or exclusion—has steadily narrowed the space for critical thought. In such a climate, it is worth asking what becomes of intellectual rigor, of study, and of the capacity to think beyond inherited frameworks. What, indeed, has become of our willingness to engage complexity rather than retreat into consensus?

This essay is not intended as provocation, nor as a rejection of art history, but as an invitation to reconsider it. Rethinking is not synonymous with negation; it is a necessary scholarly practice that distinguishes historical significance from unexamined reverence. Within the history of modern abstraction, few figures illustrate this need more clearly than Jackson Pollock, whose canonization has often relied on mythic narratives of originality, freedom, and heroic gesture. These narratives, powerful as they have been, have also discouraged sustained critical reassessment while marginalizing alternative contributions that complicate the story.

Revisiting Pollock within a broader historical and perceptual context—alongside overlooked predecessors, contemporaries, and contemporary practitioners—reopens abstraction as a living, evolving language rather than a settled doctrine. Such a reconsideration asks how rhythm, structure, color, and judgment function alongside gesture, and whether abstraction might regain perceptual clarity without surrendering vitality.

Pollock’s Myth and the Legacy of Gesture

One of the most persistent claims surrounding Pollock’s drip paintings is their supposed rhythmic energy. His early works do indeed possess a striking vitality, a physical immediacy that marked a decisive break from prior compositional conventions. Yet, closer examination of many later paintings reveals a different condition. Gesture becomes repetitive rather than developmental, accumulating into dense surfaces that lack modulation or repose. Instead of establishing a dynamic relationship between movement and rest, these works often overwhelm through sheer continuity of action.

The absence of compositional hierarchy leaves the viewer’s eye in constant motion without resolution—not out of fascination, but from necessity. The surface offers little sense of arrival or transformation. Rhythm, rather than unfolding over time, collapses into saturation.

Color compounds this problem. Pollock’s palette frequently consolidates into blacks, browns, grays, and muted whites that merge rather than converse. Rather than generating chromatic tension or luminosity, color often reinforces opacity and weight. Where color might have served as an expressive counterbalance to gesture, it instead intensifies excess. The result is a painting that prioritizes action over perception, leaving beauty—long treated with suspicion in modernist discourse—largely unexplored.

Revisiting the Origins of Abstract Gesture

It is also essential to recognize that Pollock did not originate these strategies in isolation. Artists were experimenting with automatism, all-over composition, and gestural abstraction well before his rise to prominence. Janet Sobel, in particular, produced drip paintings years earlier with a rhythmic sensitivity and spatial clarity that Pollock seldom sustained. Her work demonstrates a delicate equilibrium between spontaneity and control, revealing that freedom need not abandon structure.

That Pollock encountered Sobel’s work makes her subsequent exclusion from the dominant narrative especially telling. Art history, in this case, did not merely document innovation—it curated it, selectively elevating certain figures while sidelining others whose contributions complicated the emerging myth.

The consolidation of Pollock’s status cannot be separated from the influence of Peggy Guggenheim. As a powerful patron and cultural mediator, Guggenheim played a decisive role in shaping his public image. Through exhibitions, financial support, and aggressive promotion, Pollock was positioned as the embodiment of the rugged, individualistic American artist. This framing aligned seamlessly with postwar cultural and political agendas, transforming Abstract Expressionism into a symbol of freedom and dominance. In this context, celebration often replaced scrutiny, and mythology displaced nuance.

Overlooked Intelligence in Abstraction

Meanwhile, artists such as Mark Tobey, Norman Lewis, and Sobel pursued abstraction with greater compositional intelligence and perceptual sensitivity. Tobey’s “white writing” achieves luminous, meditative rhythms rooted in calligraphy and spiritual inquiry. Norman Lewis brought elegance, restraint, and social consciousness to gestural abstraction, demonstrating that expressive painting could remain deliberate and reflective. These artists expanded abstraction’s possibilities rather than exhausting them, yet their contributions were overshadowed by Pollock’s mythologized persona.

A New Conversation: André Martinez-Reed

Today, this conversation is being reopened. Contemporary painter André Martinez-Reed engages directly with the unresolved tensions embedded in abstraction—gesture versus control, freedom versus form, energy versus beauty. His work neither dismisses Pollock nor imitates him. Instead, it approaches history as an open question rather than a settled conclusion.

What gives Martinez-Reed’s engagement particular weight is the breadth of experience he brings to painting. He is not only a highly skilled visual artist, but also a renowned drummer who spent over a decade performing with Cecil Taylor and other leading figures in experimental music. Immersed in improvisation at its highest level, Martinez-Reed understands rhythm not as metaphor, but as lived discipline—where freedom exists only through deep structural awareness. This musical intelligence informs his paintings, allowing gesture to function with timing, variation, and restraint rather than unchecked repetition.

Beyond music, Martinez-Reed is also a master craftsman who has built and restored finely made homes. This intimate knowledge of structure, balance, and material integrity translates directly into his approach to painting. His canvases are not accidental fields of activity, but carefully resolved spaces where intuition is guided by judgment. Added to this is his long experience as a curator and judge of art—roles that demand discernment, historical awareness, and the ability to evaluate work beyond ideology or personal preference.

Defending the Challenge: A Body of Work

This challenge to inherited assumptions is not merely theoretical. Martinez-Reed has produced over 250 large-scale paintings, each exceeding 60 x 72 inches, explicitly to explore and test the limits of abstraction. This sustained commitment demonstrates a seriousness of inquiry rarely addressed in discussions of contemporary gestural painting.

Across this expansive body of work, Martinez-Reed investigates how abstraction can remain vital without collapsing into excess, how complexity can coexist with clarity, and how rhythm can emerge through structure rather than be sacrificed to impulse. The scale and volume of these works reflect not only dedication, but a refusal to accept inherited answers. They constitute an ongoing investigation rather than a stylistic position.

Toward a New Era of Abstraction

Martinez-Reed’s paintings ultimately propose an alternative to decades of inherited assumptions. They ask whether abstraction must be aggressive to be authentic, whether disorder must be equated with freedom, and whether beauty must remain suspect. His work suggests that abstraction can move forward through discernment, openness, and accumulated knowledge—without nostalgia, without ideology, and without myth.

Reexamining Pollock does not require erasing him from history. It requires situating him honestly—among influences, peers, and successors—and allowing space for artists who continue to evolve the language he helped popularize. In doing so, contemporary painters like André Martinez-Reed demonstrate that abstraction is not a closed chapter, but an ongoing conversation—one finally free to proceed without reverence, without propaganda, and with genuine critical openness.

The conversation is far from over. Pollock helped shape it, but artists like Martinez-Reed are pushing it forward. And in doing so, they remind us that the vitality of art lies not in myth, but in the sustained courage to think, to question, and to remain open.

It is also worth pausing over time itself—often the most overlooked medium of all. Pollock’s most celebrated drip paintings emerged within a remarkably brief window, scarcely three years in duration. A flash of intensity, a sudden ignition. Powerful, yes—but fleeting. Hardly enough time to exhaust the possibilities of such a radical language, let alone to refine, deepen, or resolve it. The momentum carried him forward, but the inquiry itself remained unfinished. What followed was not evolution so much as repetition, a downhill acceleration where gesture multiplied faster than understanding.

Contrast this with the long arc of sustained study. André Martinez-Reed has spent over a decade immersed in the same fundamental questions—rhythm, color, structure, energy—returning to them again and again with patience rather than urgency. Where Pollock’s experiment burned hot and brief, Martinez-Reed’s has unfolded slowly, deliberately, allowing the language of abstraction to mature, to breathe, and to expand. Time, here, is not an accessory to innovation but its condition.

This difference matters. Mastery is not born from discovery alone, but from endurance—through repetition, correction, restraint, and reconsideration. Pollock opened a door, but walked away before the room could be fully explored. Martinez-Reed enters that space knowing its history, carrying its unresolved tensions forward, and asking not how fast abstraction can move, but how far it can truly go.