Here is one of my first loves. I got this image as a postcard so far back I don’t even remember. I think it was in High School but it might have been during college. All I know is I had it taped up on my wall, my computer, my closet door, and every other place I ever lived for decades and decades. I am pretty sure I still have it in a box in the attic.
George Luks, Girl from Madrid, oil on canvas, 1925
I fell in love with the painting, the woman and the artist the moment I saw the image. Something about the painterly style, the red lips, dark eyes, the glass of water, the shadow under her chin, the pose. Every single thing about it mesmerized me and still does to this day. It led me on a journey into George Luks’ work and the work of his fellow artists who formed the Ashcan school, so called because they painted from the real gritty of life with a lot of muted colors. Of course this painting has plenty of color but in spite of that it still feels dark and moody with its intensely dark background and harsh shadows.
For the most part the realism of the Ashcan artists is about more than just a realistic depiction of something or someone. It is about the real world of everyday struggles for the working class inhabitants of New York (and elsewhere). It is also about gritty urban landscapes far removed from the genteel beauty of manicured lawn and tennis parties. The people aren’t overly idealized, even when they are traditionally beautiful or socially high up. There is a tone and mood that tamps down the beauty and ups the emotional complexity of the sitter.
We often think of the Europeans working in Cubism, Fauvism and other isms as being the artistic rebels of the time but the Americans were equally so. The Ashcan artists actually had 16 pieces in the famous 1913 Armory show in New York that exposed the new paintings of Europe and America to an American audience for the first time.
I’ve collected a number of images from each of the 5 members of the Ashcan School; George Luks, Robert Henri, John Sloan, Everett Shinn and William Glackens. Here they are.
George Luks
Luks started his career as a newspaper illustrator in Philadelphia where he met the other men who would come to make up the Ashcan School. Their goals were influenced by Henri, who wanted artists to focus on the real world around them, the people and places dismissed and forgotten by high society and the artists that catered to that class. Luks soon moved to New York, continuing to illustrate for newspapers and adding comic strip artist to his resume. Eventually he started to focus on serious painting and became a chronicler of Manhattan’s lower east side.
George Luks, Mining Village No. 3, watercolor, 1923
George Luks, Lady with a White Hat, oil on canvas, undated
George Luks, A Clown, oil on canvas, 1929
George Luks, Holiday on the Hudson, oil on canvas, 1912
George Luks, Girl from Madrid, oil on canvas, 1925
George Luks, Portrait of a Girl, oil on canvas
George Luks, Girl in Green, oil on canvas, 1925
George Luks – Sketches
George Luks
Robert Henri
Henri was the leader and probably the most famous of the Ashcan artists. Henri was quite a bit older than the other artists in his group and as such was a mentor and artistic leader for them. He focused his artistic attention on everyday life rather than the poised and posh upper society imagery that his contemporaries were creating. His work often depicted gritty and earthy elements of society. Even when he painted society portraits, his colors and mood, as with all the Ashcan School, were muted and subtle. the circle of artists who surrounded him came to believe this emphasis on ‘real life’ was the way forward for American art and followed him down that path.
Robert Henri, Snow in New York, oil on canvas, 1902, National Gallery of Art
Robert Henri, Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney, oil on canvas, 1916, Whitney Museum of American Art
Robert Henri, Storm Tide, 1903, oil on canvas, Whitney Museum of American Art
Robert Henri, Tam Gan (and close up), oil on canvas, 1915, Buffalo AKG Art Museum
Robert Henri, West Coast of Ireland, Oil on canvas, 1913, private collection
Robert Henri, Portrait of Marjorie Henri (wife), oil on canvas, 1914, San Diego Museum of Art
Robert Henri, Reader in the Forest, pastel on paper, 1918, private collection
Robert Henri, Miss Kaji Waki, oil on canvas, 1909, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
Robert Henri, Irish Lass, oil on canvas, 1913, private collection
Robert Henri, Betalo Nude, oil on canvas, 1916, Milwaukee Art Museum
Robert Henri, George Luks Playing baseball, ink on paper, 1904
Robert Henri, Two Women on a Couch, Pen, Ink and wash, Brooklyn Museum
Robert Henri, photographic portrait
John Sloan
As was many of the Ashcan artists, Sloane was a newspaper illustrator for much of his life and is where most of his income came from. He was a prolific painter and quite well known but he was not commercially successful for quite a while.
John Sloan, McSorley’s Bar, oil on canvas, 1912
John Sloan, Turning Out the Light (from New York City Life series), etching, 1905
John Sloan, Sunday, Women Drying Their Hair, oil on canvas, 1912
John Sloan, Dust Storm, Fifth Avenue, oil on canvas, 1906, Metropolitan Museum of Art
John Sloane, The City from Greenwich Village, oil on canvas, 1922
John Sloan, Chinese Restaurant, oil on canvas, 190, Memorial Art Gallery of the University of Rochester
John Sloan, After the War a Medal and Maybe a Job, drawing, 1914
John Sloan, Sunbathers on the Roof, etching, 1941
John Sloan, Nude, wash and ink on paper, undated
Everett Shinn and William Glackens
Shinn and Glackens are lesser known members of the Ashcan school but their work is no less powerful. Neither exhibited at the 1913 Armory Show but Glackens welcomed the new, innovate art from Europe while Shinn showed nothing but disdain for it then and until the end of his life. If you’ve ever been to the Barnes Collection in Philadelphia, one of the preeminent museums showing modern art from the 20th century, it will be interesting for you to know that it was Glackens who went to Europe on Barne’s behalf to look for a purchase many of the new and exciting paintings of that era for Barnes. Those paintings became the foundation for Barnes’s massive collection.
Everett Shinn, Girl on Stage, oil on canvas, 1906
Everett Shinn, The White Ballet, oil on canvas, 1904, Smithsonian American Art Museum
Everett Shinn, Woman on a Staircase, oil on canvas, 1935, private collection
Everett, Shinn, A Nude, oil on canvas, undated, private collection
William Glackens, Collier’s Cover, 1910
William Glackens, On Broadway Near 8th, crayon and chalk, 1913, Delaware Art Museum
William Glackens, Armenian Girl, oil on canvas, 1916, The Barnes Collection
William Glackens, La Peritif, oil on canvas, 1926, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts
William Glackens, Young Woman in Green, oil on canvas, 1915, St. Louis Art Museum
Back in the 2000s and 2010s I took a lot of road trips. We went through Texas, Colorado and New Mexico on a regular basis. We went through a lot of roadside convenience stores and tourist stops and somewhere along the way I thought it would be fun to design postcards of what I was seeing, sort of like tourist postcards, but of the every day small realities of my travels outside of tourist attractions.
Here is a selection of the cards.
Colorado Post Cards
‘It Was All About The Light Where We Were’ Colorado‘We Saw Beautiful’ Colorado‘We Should Take A Little Hike’ Colorado‘A Vacation Day @ the Outlet Mall’ Colorado‘Our 5th Day Was the Fourth’ Colorado
New Mexico Post Cards
‘Stay on the Trail It Said And We Obeyed’ New Mexico‘Extra Hot Post Card’ New Mexico
Texas Post Cards
‘We Blew Into Texas’ Texas‘Our First Day Was A Blur’ Texas‘We Went Shopping in the Lone Star State’ Texas‘We Saw Dallas From the American Car’ Texas“I Drove Through the Panhandle and Saw This and This and This and Her’ TexasShe Served Us Breakfast in Texas’ Texas
Slide Show
It Was All About the Light Where We Were
We Saw Beautiful
A Vacation Day @ the Outlet Mall
We Should Take A Little Hike
Our 5th Day Was the Fourth
Stay On The Trail It Said and We Obeyed
Extra Hot Post Card
We Blew Into Texas
The First Day Was A Blur
We Went Shopping In The Lone Star State
We Saw Dallas From the American Car
I Drove Through the Panhandle and Saw This and This and This and Her
Back in 2009 I got a bit of local attention in Tulsa, Oklahoma for my napkin drawings. This resulted in me being interviewed by numerous print and TV reporters over the course of a few years. I was doing extensive photography work at the time as well as drawing the napkins so I jokingly proposed to the first reporter that they could photograph and interview me if they allowed me to photograph and interview them. Surprisingly the first person agreed so I continued asking and they kept saying yes.
This led to me asking them if they thought anyone else in their newsroom would be interested in this sort of project and that in turn led me to photographing a number of reporters and anchors who did not interview me but just liked the concept. And here was the concept – how different their public life was from their private life. I felt that if I could zone in on more that just the public face I could capture a bit of that dichotomy.
Finding the Private – To do that I not only photographed the person but also their environment. In particular I looked for things the public would not see on air or be told about in their writing. This included hidden tattoos, coffee cups, jewelry, makeup bags, shoes, the contents of car trunks and purses, even intimate apparel that was hanging to dry on a bathroom door knob in one case (photographed with permission).
I tried to move beyond the polished public image when photographing their face, perhaps to show the reality of what a lot of makeup looks like close up or to show what no makeup look likes, to what a face does when it shows emotion or responding to outside stimulation like sun or wind.
I chose the titles based on what I felt that person exhibited, either with me in person or my general feeling about their reporting and/or their personal life.
Here is a selection of those collages. Let me know what you think.
In Finite – In Public In Private #1 Kristen Dickerson – AnchorIn Tangible – In Public In Private #2 Janna Clark – TV ReporterIn Credible – In Public In Private #3 Lori Fulbright – Anchor / Crime ReporterIn Theater – In Public In Private #4 Sharon Phillips – TV ReporterIn Sight – In Public In Private #5 Emily Sinovic – TV ReporterIn Between – In Public In Private #6 Abby Alford – TV ReporterIn Utero – In Public In Private #7 Carrie Netherton Salce – TV ReporterIn Trepid – In Public In Private #8 Holly Wall – Investigative Reporter – PrintIn Tuition – In Public In Private #9 Natasha Ball = Investigative Reporter – PrintIn Voluntary – In Public In Private #10 Teri Hood – TV AnchorIn Vocation – In Public In Private #11 Chera Kimiko – TV AnchorIn Consequential – In Public In Private #12 Michelle Lowry – TV Reporter
Slide Show
In Finite – In Public/In Private #1
Kristen Dickerson
In Tangible – In Public/In Private #2Janna Clark
In Credible – In Public/In Private #3
Lori Fulbright
In Theater – In Public/In Private #4Sharon Phillips
In Sight – In Public/In Private #5
Emily Sinovic
In Between – In Public/In Private #6
Abbie Alford
In Utero – In Public/In Private #7
Carrie Netherton Salce
In Trepid – In Public/In Private #8
Holly Wall
In Tuition – In Public/In Private #9
Natasha Ball
In Voluntary – In Public/In Private #10
Teri Hood
In Vocation – In Public/In Private #11
Chera Kimiko
In Consequential – In Public/In Private #12Michelle Lowry
The Wondering Breast – The Stranger Juxtaposition #1
The Wondering Breast – The Stranger Juxtaposition #1
Something On Her Mind – The Stranger Juxtaposition #2
Something On Her Mind – The Stranger Juxtaposition #2
‘She had something she had seen while on the cruise afixed in her mind. It was in keeping with her loneliness and she felt it was obvious to all around her as if it was an adornment atop her head. She wanted desperately to take off the accouterment but was unwilling in the end because she knew it would never be amongst her charms unless she let in shrink in place and migrate to her bracelet on its own accord so she let it exist, remaining slightly melancholy for the duration of the voyage.’
The Color Opera – The Stranger Juxtaposition #3
The Color Opera – The Stranger Juxtaposition #3
The light coming through the salon door was luminescent and the blue jewelry and eyes popped. I left, went south and found an abandoned ranch, finding similar colors. It was an opera of color.
I Wish – The Stranger Juxtaposition #4
I Wish – The Stranger Juxtaposition #4
The gallery was airy and the assistant had great eyebrows and there was an interesting painting with the word penis in it and there was a colorful potted tree outside and a wall of tile.
The Healing – The Stranger Juxtaposition #5
The Healing – The Stranger Juxtaposition #5
‘The woman who didn’t want to look but found the courage to face the light and thus was healed in the Vietnamese nail salon.’
Love Like Jesus – The Stranger Juxtaposition #6
Love Like Jesus – The Stranger Juxtaposition #6
‘She had yet to understand how she could love too much. Not because it was bad but because people would be like lesser mortals and she would end up being like Jesus, without people who understood her and perhaps crucified.’
The Cake Seller – The Stranger Juxtaposition #7
The Cake Seller – The Stranger Juxtaposition #7
‘Her dream was to be a dancer from the time she saw her father enthralled by the flamenco troupe that came through her small town in Mexio when she was 7 and a half years old and her sone had not even been aseen in her far eye. And now her love is so deep and true that she sells her cake at the mall and dances for him, not her father anymore.’
Maybe Yes No – The Stranger Juxtaposition #8
Maybe Yes No – Stranger Juxtaposition #8
The eye doctor’s eyes, pearls and shoes said 3 different things.
The Separation Anxiety – The Stranger Juxtaposition #10
The Separation Anxiety – Stranger Juxtaposition #10
She took our family photo and we had done the same for her. I didn’t notice her separation anxiety until I got home.
The Dreamer – The Stranger Juxtaposition #11
The Stranger Juxtaposition #11
‘I witnessed her dreaming, day and otherwise, while on the ferry in the bay next to the island with the tree and the blue sky on vacation.’
The Listener – The Stranger Juxtaposition #12
The Listener – The Stranger Juxtaposition #12
‘The woman at the table next to me at the conference listening while I did not but instead had my camera in my lap and took photos of interesting beauty because in the end that is what will remain and I like that.’
The Lookers – The Stranger Juxtaposition #13
The Stranger Juxtaposition #13
‘Something about the way they looked at me persuaded me to give them my money.’
With certain projects I know when I photograph the person I want more than just a portrait of their face because they are more than their face. I want to college more about who they are, including often their clothings, other parts of their bodies, surroundings, backgrounds, homes, and more. It is a collection of images that tell their story.
With Visual Poems I collected the images without knowing I was going to do this series. I was working on other series at the time that also had me collecting diverse images from the shoots and it wasn’t until afterwards that I started to see the possibilities in design and content that led in this direction.
I would love to know if you have a favorite and why so don’t be shy about leaving a comment.
I have two websites, this one and ‘martycoleman.com’. That one is moribund and I no longer post to it. But I did in the past and there are many posts and galleries there that aren’t on this website, especially in the area of photo-collage, which I have done extensively since the 1990s.
I am posting those series at ‘The Napkin’ over the next few months.
The first is called ‘Truths and Things I Made Up About These Women’. The germination of this idea started when I was photographing friends. I was in conversation with them as they posed and came to learn certain things about them. Later, as I was doing the collages I would think about how the viewer would see them. They would nothing about these people but they would have some impression from the image. But what if I put some verbal hints of who she is, how would that affect how the viewer saw the person?
That led to me laying out a list of true things about the person, things they had told me, and then adding in one (or more) things I made up. Why not just say true things? Because I like the idea of the viewer having to think about their own perception and to engage with that perception to think deeper about how we judge and come to conclusions about people.
The text is small in many cases as they were originally created to be seen in large format in a gallery setting.
Here is a selection from that series. Let me know what you think in the comments.
Ever since I started using an iphone for photography instead of my old dslr camera I have done much less street photography. But recently I took trips to Los Angeles and Las Vegas and I was inspired to entertain that genre again. Here are some of the images I came up with.
I often will go back into old sketchbooks and continue working on images, no matter how old they are. This is usually because it is a line drawing that I am now interested in painting. It’s a mystery why some images don’t catch my imagination to go farther than the original drawing until many years or decades later. But when the spirit moves I usually act on it. Here are a selection of drawings where I did just that.
Move the slider from left to right to see the before and after versions.
Woman Studying at Starbucks at Utica Square, Tulsa, OK – drawn 2015, painted 2025
Woman in Pajamas in the Hospital Waiting Room Drawn 2015, painted 2025
Sarah Jo at ‘Nutrition with Attitude’, Rowlett, TX – Drawn 2024, painted 2025
The Writer at Starbucks, Denver, CO Drawn 2016, painted 2025
Why do I love Frida and her art? Let me count the ways. She’s a story teller and a truth teller. She’s creatively, emotionally, socially, politically and relationally fearless and courageous. She’s resilient and persistent. She’s independent. I went to the Dallas Museum of Art this week to see the Exhibition ‘Frida: Beyond the Myth’. It’s organized as a chronological review of her life and art and uses photographs, drawings and paintings to examine and explain how her biography was so important to her creativity and resulting artwork.
Frida with Cigarette,, Altavista, 1941 Nicolas Muray, gelatin silver print
This stunning photo shows how truly determined and successful she was in being herself, fully and completely, with no apologies and no regrets. She had immense pressure to conform throughout her life and at every turn she chose to stand her ground and say, ‘This is me, take me or leave me’. This led her to being respected around the world by thousands of artists and art patrons, even as she confronted their culpability in bending to the status quo that she herself would not.
THE ACCIDENT
The seminal event of her life was a trolley/bus accident when she was just 19 years old. She suffered a fractured spine, broken ribs and collarbone, dislocated shoulder, crushed right foot and multiple fractures in her right leg. She was not expected to survived and as a matter of fact, her then boyfriend, who was also in the accident and injured, though less severely, advocated assertively for the doctors to work hard to save her when the inclination was that she was probably not going to make it.
The Accident, 1926
THE FIRST SELF-PORTRAIT
Self Portrait in a Velvet Dress, oil on canvas, 1926
Kahlo is known for her self-portraits and here is her first known one. Painted a year after the accident she gave it to her boyfriend Alejandro Gómez Arias in appreciation and in hopes of keeping her in his thoughts while she continued to recover.
THE ABORTION
Years later she was romantically attached to Diego Rivera, one of the most famous of all Mexican muralists. Upon finding out she was pregnant Rivera demanded she get an abortion, which she did. It was the first of many. This image illustrates the severe depression she suffered as a result. It is one of the first where she illustrates a cycle of life, something she returns to again and again.
THE DEBACLE
In the early 1930s Diego Rivera was invited to create a number of murals around the United States. They all ended up being controversial but none more so than his mural at Rockefeller Center in New York City. It depicted the heroes of the communist revolution in the Soviet Union and around the world. This of course did not go over well with the ardent capitalists of New York, especially the Rockefellers. The mural was condemned and covered up after many many months of work on his part.
My Dress Was There Hanging (New York), oil and collage on masonite, 1933-1938
Frida was incensed by what she saw as the blatant hypocrisy of America in condemning Rivera’s work while promoting itself as a paragon of Christian humanity toward others. If that was so, why were the unemployed allowed to starve? That and many other questions haunted her and this painting was her effort to express that by showing the disparity between the collaged unemployed below with the ostentatiousness and seduction above.
My Dress Was There Hanging (New York), close up
Frida in front of the Unfinished Communist Unity Panel, New Workers School, 1933, Photograph by Lucienne Bloch
THE SUICIDE OF DOROTHY HALE
One thing Kahlo was above all else was direct. She wasn’t obtuse or hidden in her visual story telling. This didn’t always work well for her. In 1939 Clare Booth Luce commissioned Kahlo to created a portrait of remembrance for the mother of Dorothy Hale, an actress who had committed suicide by jumping out of a New York Skyscraper. Kahlo did not paint a portrait of remembrance, she painted a very graphic and direct image of Hale falling to her death. Luce wanted to destroy the painting as it was deeply disturbing to her but was talked out of it.
The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, 1939, oil on masonite with hand painted frame
The Suicide of Dorothy Hale, close up
SELF – TRANSFORMATION
Kahlo continued to paint self portraits throughout her life but they changed as she got older. No longer do you see her refined and elegant with her hair up. Now she is starting to show herself with her hair down, more casual and unkempt, something that had to do with her being bedridden in pain but also because she no longer was driven to adorn herself, to be ‘attractive’ to Rivera or anyone else.
Self-portrait with Monkey, 1945, oil on masonite
Self-Portrait with Loose Hair, 1947, oil on Masonite
STILL LIFE
As she became less mobile she spent more and more time painting symbolic images and still lifes. That didn’t mean she gave up imbuing her images with meaning. As you can tell in Sun and Life the symbolism is strong, with a fetus, labia images and shooting phalluses. This was painted not long after she had her 4th abortion so it is likely it all refers back to the complicated sexual and emotional relationship she had with Rivera.
Sun and Life, 1947, oil on Masonite
Sun and Life, close up
In this still life you can see similar imagery reflecting her identity. The sensual cut open fruit, the Mexican flag and native parrot all show parts of her, as does the flag impaling the fruit, not unlike how she was impaled in the accident so many years before.
Still Life with Parrot and Flag, 1951, Oil on masonite
BEDRIDDEN
For the last years of her life she was completely bedridden, unable to go anywhere. She was in constant pain and the various surgeries she underwent through the years had all failed to alleviate it. She painted from her bed until she could no longer. She died in 1954 at the age of just 47.
Frida Painting with Diego Rivera looking on, 1951
THE END
In the end it has to be said Frida Kahlo led a very tortured and sad life in many ways. She would agree, not being one to have a pretend happy disposition when it wasn’t warranted. There is a type of person who wears their heart on their sleeve. Kahlo was like that but instead of on her sleeve she wore it in her paintings. They are masterful dissections of a deeply wounded soul, baring the most intimate of feelings for all the world to see. She was one of the first true autobiographical artists and her influence in the art world has been felt ever since.
Frida with Magenta Rebozo, 1939, Photograph by Nickolas Muray
I have continued to draw with my Copic Gasenfude ink brush lately. Something about the line width control I can get and, at the same time, the unpredictability of the line makes me enjoy both the act and result of drawing.
And as you can see I continue to draw in church. The sermons have been particularly uninspiring since our new Pastor arrived 4 months ago so I am very glad to have my sketchbook with me. The only problem is not paying attention to the sermon, which I used to be able to do but only if it’s brain stimulating in some way. When they aren’t I tend to zone it out.
