Yesterday I went to Williamsburg (Brooklyn) with a new friend I met recently at the Dance on Camera festival, Teressa Valla. Teressa’s an artist — a painter and sculptor. She calls herself a “kinetic artist” because she’s inspired by and tries to capture movement. She often uses dancers as her models. Visit her website to see some of her beautiful work. We went to Brooklyn to see one of her paintings that is currently showing in the Sideshow gallery. I think it’s this painting.
I loved this gallery. It’s one of those whose walls are almost entirely covered by art. I love that. That’s the effect I try to create with my walls, although my art is all quite cheap! Some people may think it looks too busy, but not me. I love busy!
Anyway, I totally fell in love with this one piece of art by an artist named Terrence Miele. Unfortunately, the painting isn’t on the gallery’s website and the artist doesn’t seem to have his own site. It was called “Portrait of –” — someone with a long Polish or Czech-sounding last name that began with “K” — and it wasn’t really a realistic, lifelike portrait (like the above), but kind of more expressionistic, like more expressive of a feeling (like Scream — one of my favorite art works). The man, K’s features — his mouth, his eyes, and eyebrows, were all doubled, so it looked like he was shuddering. It was really disconcerting, even dizzying, to look at.
Anyway, we walked around Williamsburg, which is one of those recently gentrified arty areas where there are many galleries, browsed some over-priced used books on the street (guy wanted $10 a piece — the covers were all dirty and buggy, some pages rain-soaked, etc., come on), had Thai food (and I had Thai iced tea with brandy, which was fun but I later got a violent migraine — either from that or perhaps they used msg in my fish), and then we ended up at this great store called Junk. It was huge and they had everything from antiques to used furniture, paintings, jewelry, buttons, clothing, videos, books, etc. Teressa found a chair and a shirt and I found a table (we didn’t buy the furniture — yet) and this painting (above, for $5) that I really fell for. She laughed and said, “hmmm, Rembrandt??,” but to me it said, Musketeer! It makes me wonder who painted it — an art student playing around with Rembrandt style or is it indeed a Musketeer (I think he is about to withdraw a sword) — and how long ago was it painted, and how did it get to Junk?
Anyway, he looks kind of cute on my mantle, no?
