Before We Painted Knox

Knox wasn't our first home visit nor was he our first painting. The first paintings we made were of Murray and Steve our inner inner circles, Murray being Libby's husband and Steve being Roberta's. We think of Murray and Steve as artists; they probably don't. They're both writers and they're both creative and brilliant and hard-working and successful and curious about the world and driven to make a mark. (top image, Steve)


These paintings also have traces of us in them. On purpose, we put ourselves in because the project we imagined included our footprint in each painting. (Roberta is the green hairy cucumber in the painting of Steve, just in case you were wondering.) We quickly gave that idea up for the paintings of our other friends but we can't imagine portraits of our boys without us in them. (this painting is Murray. Libby has never been on a skateboard or a surfboard in her life.)

Because this project is now about visiting artists we're trying to figure out the best venue to visit with Steve and Murray. We think we'll take them out to dinner.

Our Visit to Knox

As it turns out we had some second thoughts about what Knox cares about so we paid him a visit in his studio. Here's a photograph of Knox in his studio. We think he looks like Thoreau with a telephone. The studio is in the middle of Philadelphia, not on the side of Walden Pond.

What Knox Cares About

Sculpture, Zeebee, Lucy, Vermont, his pets, the ecosystem, politics, his responsibilities to his and Lucy's families.

Last Year

A year ago, we started making some paintings of our friends.

Here's a picture of our good friend Knox. We've known him for 15 years or so. He was once a big part of our lives, part of a salon that met almost monthly at the best of times, for a number of years.

Since artblog, we haven't had a chance to see him so much. So we made a painting of him in order to have him around. The painting was from our imaginations, our memories of him and what he cared about. Here it is.