Eggplant

Or maybe that should be egg-plant. I still have to find a good way to get artwork to reproduce well digitally. So far, neither camera nor scanner has been all that satisfactory.

November Flower

This blossom was still blooming outside in late November on the Massachusetts coast.

New England Beach

A New England beach on a blustery day Saturday after Thanksgiving.

Study with Girl and Cats

I used as a source a photo of a friend's daughter napping on a sofa with two cats on lookout. The inherent stillness of them all made me think of traditional still life compositions. It may be a bit hard to make out at first - I was using a very loose constantly moving pen to build up mass rather than taking a strictly linear approach as in a line drawing.

Figure Study

I did this at a regular life drawing session I attend. Medium was India ink, dip pen, and brush. No pencil in advance, so, as happens with ink, it was a lesson in commitment.

Hand and Foot Drawings from 11/14 and 11/15

I find myself drawn (pun creation was unintentional, but now that I see it, it stays) to sanguine-colored ink, for some reason. Maye it's the older look of it. Have to try some experiments with off-white to tan colored papers.

The Turner Prize - Bastion of Maleness

The Turner Prize is given out annually to a British visual artist under the age of 50. It is a Very Big Deal in that country and raises a fair amount of controversy. One of the issues is whether the prize is dominated by men.

I am by no means a "feminist." Nor do I subscribe to the automatic assumption that men do terrible things to women while women are blameless and never injure men. At the same time, I'd prefer to examine a charge before I react. So I went to look at the list of Turner winners over the years.

That list is, to my eye, overwhelmingly male. I'm not suggesting at all that there must be awards ruled by gender parity. But you have to wonder the state of the judges and the decision process. Since the award started in 1984, with no prize given in 1990, there have been three women who won, versus 21 men. I would be suspicious of a perfect 50-50 split, but seven to one? Are male artists really that much better than female? Not from what I've seen in photography, painting, sculpture, video, and other art forms.

There have also been only three years in which the majority of judges were women (though not the same three years as when womeen won). I know that critics, curators, and academics are supposed to be above gender bias, but I think it becomes something that is culturally and even biologically hard-wired. For example, I'm a writer, and I enjoy the work of many writers. But I probably have a closer affinity in general to the work of male writers because they have a tone and approach closer to my own inclinations. I suspect the same might be true in any craft. (Consider your own social circle and how men and women often divide on gender lines over some types of popular entertainment.) If the committee stays generally dominated by male sensibilities, then I wouldn't be surprised if the prize continued to be awarded more often to men. That is wrong and also foolish.

To be fair, I understand that putting together a panel of experts can be difficult. I once moderated a panel on narrative non-fiction at a writing conference and was accused of gender bias because all of the panelists were men. As it happened, I asked a number of leading publications if they could send a representative, and those happened to be the people available. But when that happens 70 percent of the time, you must wonder whether it continues to be accident.