Upper image: Untitled landscape by Martin Weinstein. Lower image: Untitled drawing by Christopher Wool, with Katie DeGroot, owner of both pieces,
and Director of the Skidmore Summer Arts Program.

About Martin Weinstein’s painting I love the pattern. It’s something you see when you drive around Washington County, where I live, but I don’t know a lot of artists who deal with pattern like this. He has this pattern-pattern-pattern, all throughout the piece - the pattern of the clouds, the pattern of the shadows on the landscape, the pattern of the fields, and then these rows in the foreground…. I like how pattern makes you perceive something as art - I mean, the image works like a window, so you’re looking into a landscape, but then all that pattern keeps you trapped on the surface, and I love that juxtaposition.

I can’t imagine living in a house without art. I mean, one of the joys of being an artist is getting to own art by other artists, whether you trade for it or buy it. I’m not a collector really, but over the years I’ve been lucky enough to get pieces by artists I really like, and it’s a great pleasure to have them in the house, and to have people look at them. And there’s no way there isn’t some interaction between looking at a piece of art you walk by every day and it ending up somewhere in your brain, and then maybe somewhere else coming out your hand.
Katie DeGroot, 2012