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
Schick Art Gallery