the glowing heart

the promise of life and life itself

life menaced?

running as fast as I can

A Big Fish in a Small Pond

Postcard from Venice: II, Cruising all the way

watching as Venice goes under.

Postcard from Venice: I

The Investigators: Susan Joan Rosen, Ph.D., and Paul Peter Rosen, M.D.

at 285 Riverside Drive, Manhattan, at 101st street, apartment 2B. Our collection of live specimens--snapping turtles from Garnet lake, New York State

Facts of Life and Love

Amazing Grace

Spinning Time: Happy Birthday Bob Dylan, one day late

Light, the essence of Photography

Cubism on Madison Avenue, Manhattan

in a manner of speaking

it trembles facing the light

Paul Peter Rosen, MD and his sister Susan Joan Rosen, Ph.D

Photographed in Manhattan when we were very young and professional degrees were far off in the future. How old were we? Paul or Peter to his family, is three and half years older than I am: three and six perhaps?

Tepotzlan, Mexico: best of friends T and Susan

T B and Susan Joan Rosen; when we were twelve.
I visited Mexico in 1953 with my parents and my brother Paul Peter Rosen and was happily reunited with "my best friend."

Explorers: mapping a glowing sphere

The Hudson River: tranquility

seeking safety in the deep and coming up for air

"in a heart's beat" : could this be love?

medication to still or energize the heart

Aphrodite, newborn, emerges from the Sea, I

Anne van Grevenstein-Kruse and The Ghent Altarpiece

I met Anne van Grevenstein-Kruse, Director of the Limburg Institute (SRAL) in the the Amsterdam-Maastricht Summer University (AMSU) course Historic Painting Techniques in Oil: The Confrontation between Rembrandt and Rubens (18 August—24 August, 2007). Anne was a benevolent watchful presence, guiding participants with a gentle wise hand. I am grateful to her for her careful organization of such a complicated enterprise.

Grevenstein-Kruse is recognized as one of the most respected living conservators of our day. To entrust the conservation of the Ghent Altarpiece, the “Sistine Chapel” of fifteenth century Flemish painting, to her care, testifies to her unique standing among her colleagues. Knowledge and skill and the ability to lead a group of learned associates will protect and preserve Jan van Eyck’s masterpiece for the future. Completed in 1432, the altarpiece is more than half a millennium old, a venerable age. That it is still “alive” is amazing, considering its history. Throughout its lifetime it has been vandalized and almost destroyed on several occasions, most recently in the twentieth century when it was seized by the Nazis who stored it in a salt mine. Only after the defeat of the Third Reich, did it return to Belgium and was restored to its original location, the Vydt chapel in the church of St John, in Ghent. (The church was renamed for Saint Bavo in 1539 and became a cathedral.) More recently the altarpiece was displayed in the choir, enclosed by a glass wall.

My drawing of Anne van Grevenstein-Kruse was based on a black and white photocopy of a blurry digital. I was struck by van Grevenstein’s features which reminded me of physiognomies pictured by sixteenth--century Low Country and German artists. My initial intention was to do a silverpoint drawing, using cross-hatching and other drawing techniques of the period, but I found myself preferring pencil. The pencils used were Faber—Castell 9000 3B, Faber—Castell TK 9071 5B, and Stabilo Schwan 8046. The paper is a sheet (9” X 12”) of Central Clay Coat, New York Central Art Supply. This was the first drawing I have made from a photograph of a living person; all other portraits that I drew or painted were from life. In the future I will rarely attempt this again; I favor flesh and blood, and interaction between the model and myself.

for more on the photograph click here

Static motion: a contradiction

Nature fashions a sphere

Is it as dark as it seems to be?

Two Horses: the love of beasts. Can you identify the painter[s]

answer in an ensuing text. why ask this question? the instructor in me. the answer may surprise some.

life's tricks

now you do and now you won't
when was it easy
who said it would be easy
that's the way it is
from then to now and evermore

passed him on the road of life
two tracks
he stopped back there
couldn't go farther
my boat speeds on
looking back I see him
and then I don't

Marco Polo April 2010
water taxi to Venice

a stilled life: remembering Emma

no longer present, memory preserves, as do images of her during her life. but just as she is no longer physically present in "her" corner, so, too, the motifs in this still life are not corporeal.

a Still Life: inside, outside

The IRT and 125th Street: decrepit but still functional

These tracks served me will for so many years, not least to take me back and forth to Music and Art High School , now part of La Guardia High School, located on 135th Street and Convent. But they also conveyed me to Inwood, to the Cloisters, to an apartment on Riverside Drive; they are one with my life but our paths diverged. Now I drive beneath them; then I sat in a car, as the subway rolled along on them. Two views, two stages in life. Shadows of the past accompany me in my memory

Waiting for the Light to Change: NYC, 125th Street Broadway