As I start to write this, I have Debbie Baxter’s photographic tribute to healing open on my lap. I am sitting comfortably in my favorite chair by a roaring fire, but my cheeks are damp. Not with sadness, but with swelling admiration and hope. Her book, NEST, is a tribute to courage—the courage of trauma survivors to grapple with their demons and learn to trust, to feel, and to face their pain. . .

Read the full Art Letter

Read David’s Art Letter essay, Demons and twigs: The healing art of Debbie Baxter, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch

In 2016, Condé Nast published a magazine to commemorate the death of the rock star Prince. For the cover image it used one of Andy Warhol’s screenprint portraits of the musician. As Warhol had done with much of his art, including his more famous portraits of Marilyn Monroe, he created the print by adapting and manipulating a photograph, in this case one taken by Lynn Goldsmith. . .

Read the full Art Letter

This is the third and final part of Warhol and the Supreme Court.
Read or revisit part 1: the new law of creation and part 2: the new problem.

Read David’s Art Letter essay, Nothing comes from nothing, Part 3, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch

The Supreme Court has recently upended what artists thought they knew about the line between inspiration and copying.

Late last year, in Warhol Foundation v. Goldsmith (2023), the Court ruled that the publication by Condé Nast of one of Andy Warhol’s silk-screen prints of the rock musician Prince violated the copyright of the photographer whose photo Warhol had radically transformed. . .

Read the full Art Letter

Read David’s Art Letter essay, Warhol and the Supreme Court: Nothing comes from nothing, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch

Getting to know Thérèse Murdza

I was invited to be part of a recent group show at the Ford Gallery. As I walked into the gallery in Southeast Portland to deliver my painting, I stopped cold. There, dominating the lobby, was this. . .

See the entire Art Letter

Read David’s Art Letter essay, Therese Murdza’s paintings in the shape of sounds, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch

Forty-odd pound masses of wet clay bagged in plastic. Scrap discarded by factories, free to takers. Each different, yet each the same: damp metaphors for humanity. A gift from industry to the hands of ceramic artists, to be worked, folded, coiled, or spun into bowls, cups, vases.

See the entire Art Letter

Read David’s Art Letter essay, ‘Thud’: Emily Ginsburg’s crazy quilts of clay scraps, featured in Oregon ArtsWatch