httpvh://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3aWbnVLS-I

My new exhibition at Vito Schnabel’s Gallery is my first solo painting show in NY in over 20 years. I will be showing about 16 small canvas (app. 36 inches high) in poison green (oil on linen) with a very short poem painted on each. Also in this colour will be several double-height canvas with longer poems.

 The show is titled, “Sonnets From the Portuguese” which is in no way meant to impugn the reputation of Elisabeth Barrett Browning. I use this title to show my affection for the city of Lisbon and my friends there who have allowed me to raid their family albums for the old photos that I’ve copied as the imagery in the 9 large to very large (up to 8 feet high) canvases that comprise the rest of the show. These are painted over with longer new poems.

On the title picture, the phrase, “Sonnets From the Portuguese”, is written in oil paint on the glass of a large framed engraving by the great Portuguese painter of the Napoleonic era, Domingos Sequeira.

– Rene Ricard