Beginning in 2009, my colleague Liz Hager and I published a blog called Venetian Red. We wrote essays on artists and subjects that we were passionate about, and while our interests and obsessions were quite different, what united us was our mutual love of historical textiles and a fervent belief in the importance of art and decorative art in our lives. In recent years, as we both become absorbed in our studio practice, we stopped writing for Venetian Red, but the things we wrote about are still very much alive and central to our work. I’ve transferred a dozen or so of my posts that still resonate the most to this new blog. From time to time, as it relates to new paintings or textile projects, I will highlight one of these posts. In the meantime, they are available via the Archive to the right of this page, or you can access all of the posts Liz and I published at Venetian Red.

The first Venetian Red post I would like to highlight is The Play’s the Thing: A History of Toy Theater in Three Acts. After I began collecting Victorian paper theaters they inspired the layered and theatrical format of many of my paintings, such as The King’s Opera, above.