Spring 2024

Restoration, 2024
Acrylic on Canvas
72 x 60 in

March 21st, 2024

I stay in New York over the winter. Many of my friends do not. They leave, seeking warmer climes or just looking to escape the incline toward short days and long nights, slate skies and scudding clouds and that particular moist chill that can induce even the strongest of us to wish we could transport ourselves elsewhere for just a week or two.  I stay in New York because I have family and dear friends here, because I feel that time spent with them is the best use of a precious resource. I stay because my studio is here and the thought of being away from it for a lengthy period depresses me. I stay because I am a passionate fan of the Giants, the Knicks and the Rangers and I enjoy the feeling of being part of a crowd that erases your individuality at their games, breaks your boundaries and recasts you as part of something larger than yourself. I stay because I love snowfall and the stillness of a winter landscape. I stay because I admire the sharper edge New York City has in the months when there are no leaves on the trees, the winds blow down the sides of the skyscrapers toward you, colors give way to stone and asphalt and a lighted row or column of apartment lights at dusk can make your heart sing with delight.

I don’t cast aspersions on my friends who decamp for other places. I’ve done it in the past. Perhaps I’ll do it in the future. But for now, I don’t want to miss New York winters. 

I’m delighted to say that I will be participating in a group show being exhibited at Galerie Brigitte Mulholland in Paris (81, rue de Turenne) in April.

This is a brand new gallery being opened by a young woman who is a very well regarded curator and was the lead Director at the Anton Kern Gallery in New York City for some years. To be included in her opening exhibit is quite an honor. Among those who will be featured in this show are Julie Curtiss and Kathy Bradford, both of whose work is quite different from mine but both of whom are very successful contemporary artists. Their inclusion along with that of some of the other well-known artists, and the excitement around Brigitte herself, is already attracting attention. I’m very pleased to be getting exhibited in Europe and hope that being included in this show will lead to a lot of good things down the road.

The art world is a very “interesting” place. It is filled with “gatekeepers” who make it extremely hard for emerging artists to get a foothold in what can be an arbitrary and capricious universe. These gatekeepers aren’t evil. There are tens of thousands of artists creating every day and many are quite talented. You can imagine them pushing against the gates seeking recognition and reward in a field of endeavor that has only limited capacity to offer what is so desired. So those gatekeepers (critics, gallerists, dealers, collectors, curators, etc.) serve as filters that are necessary even if sometimes misguided in their judgments. I have been fortunate that a gallery previously included me in a show and that some savvy collectors, a few of whom already have interesting collections, have added my paintings to their walls. Now comes Brigitte Mulholland, by any definition one of those “gatekeepers” and an influential one at that, and she really likes my work. By including me in this first show at her new gallery, and by her generous offer to co-curate a show that would include a number of my pieces in New York, she has helped open the gate and allowed me to get on the path to “established” in a span of time that is radically shorter than that experienced by all but the rarest of artists. I am quite grateful.

I cannot end this letter without noting the courage and determination of Alexi Navalny. He did what most of us could not do: stand up to a depraved regime led by a murderous leader whom he had to know was unlikely to allow him to come safely home after an unsuccessful assassination attempt. He chose to leave his wife and two children and get on that plane back to Moscow because he believed that opposition to Putin was not only possible but necessary. He made a decision much like the young people in the White Rose in Nazi Germany made: that even at the certain risk of your life there are principles that are worth embodying if we are to have a purpose beyond ourselves. Some call him foolhardy. Some even call him selfish because he had to know that the odds were that his wife would be left a widow and his children fatherless. As for me, I think he was driven simply because that was who he was and he could not act otherwise. He may have had a streak of vainglory in him, perhaps a distorted framing of his environment as he viewed himself as the hero of a great Russian drama, but he also had somehow created an opposition that became effective enough in a totalitarian state that the dictator felt the need to kill and jail nearly all of that opposition lest his regime be put in actual danger.

Whatever any of us think of his makeup and motivation, can you imagine getting on that plane to Moscow after his recovery in Germany?  This wasn’t Lenin riding to the Finland Station on a sealed train, convinced that the people would rise up against an oppressive regime upon his arrival. This was a man getting on a plane knowing that what awaited him was a regime that was so eager to rid itself of him that they had sought to kill him. That regime is evil. It thinks nothing of killing thousands of Ukrainians, thousands of Africans who might threaten its commercial interests, acting as a rogue internationally and jailing and killing honorable opponents domestically. Evil should be opposed. But how many among us could have found the will to do what Navalny did? I’d like to think I could, and would. But when I look at my wife and children, and my grandchildren, I can only say I’m glad that is a hypothetical question that I needn’t answer.

I wish you all a glorious spring. I have had an amazing first year as a professional artist and it looks like there are exciting days to come. I will always appreciate those who were “with me” at the beginning. Thank you.

Regards,

Abbott Stillman