This week on my drawing board

Journal cover

White foxes on ice, that's nice! A sketchbook page I began earlier but just finished.

I seem to have overlooked the coming of the new year, as evidenced by the date stamp.

Aaron Birnbaum, memory painter

He was a dress manufacturer who took up painting at the age of 70 and became a beloved folk artist. His daughter brought him paints and art supplies to help ease the loneliness after the death of his wife.  A year before his death at the age of 103 in 1998,  Birnbaum went to the opening of a retrospective of his work at the Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art in Ridgefield, Conn. "When they arrived for the opening, Mr. Schuss recalled, Mr. Birnbaum seemed humbled, saying, 'If I would have known my paintings were going to a museum, I would have worked a little longer on them.'" β€” 1998 NYT obituary.

Abstract Saturday: William Baziotes

I've always loved "The Parachutists."  Here are a few more of the works of Baziotes ( 1912-1963, American) from the same period.

William-Baziotes, The Parachutists 1944

Woman at window 1946

William Baziotes, The Schoolroom, 1943. Eli and Edythe Broad Art Museum, Gift of Clement Greenberg. Β© William Baziotes

The Room, 1945