The New Yorkers: Susanna Heller, Karlis Rekevics and Rackstraw Downes

Karlis Rekevics, “Broad Ordinary Occasions #11” (detail)

What happened was that after my painter friend and I saw the show at the Studio School we headed down to the Lower East Side and it was so hot we decided to stop in at Betty Cunningham and there we stayed in the AC on a couch (bless her!) discussing these three remarkable artists who take new York as their subject.

Susanna Heller was always in motion. I wonder if there is an inch of New York pavement that she didn’t cross or stand and draw on. She wanted to draw everything in the city all at once and devised this beautiful stenography to do it. She covered the waterfront; she took aerial views; I remember some remarkable drawings of an historic church uptown smoldering after a fire; she drew the ruin of the towers after 9/11. The weather (and the air itself) is always a part of these drawings, sometimes benign, with blue skies and scudding clouds, but often a storm is either threatening or upon us.

Read the original article here… and come back to discuss on artistvenu below