Spring 2026

The Residue of Experience, 2025
Acrylic on Canvas
72 x 60 in

March 14th, 2026

This winter we saw American athletes being booed at the Olympics, the Supreme Court finally grow a spine, Tucker Carlson being gently admonished by the President for his openly antisemitic ravings, two great gold medal hockey contests in Cortina that had the American flag being waved by all parts of the political spectrum, a threat by Trump to take possession of Greenland that caused the other members of NATO to actually discuss whether they would meet such an attempt with military action, the slaughtering of brave young protesters against the messianic regime in Iran soon followed by air attacks by the United States and Israel intended to decapitate the regime and give the Iranian people a fighting chance to turn away from the destructive course that regime had forced them down, the cancellation of many of the environmental limits on mercury emissions from coal burning in the United States (while China and India continue to rapidly build new coal-fired power plants), the incredible investments being made in the infrastructure required to keep building out the Artificial Intelligence capability (and all its potential dangers) of the leading companies in the field carrying a domestic economy that is otherwise showing signs of fatigue, what looked almost like a Civil War in Mexico between the cartels and the government, and in recent weeks the birthdays of my son, my granddaughter, my daughter-in-law and myself in rapid order. 

But I want to talk about snow. The blizzard that descended upon New York and most of the Northeast in late February was a singular event. State governments banned travel, businesses were closed, trains didn’t run, and the entire region was buried under a blanket of snow that reached three feet in areas. It started on George Washington’s birthday (I still object to the idea of “Presidents Day” because I think both Washington and Lincoln deserve an entire day of contemplating their greatness so we should still be celebrating February 12 and February 22 as we did in my youth) and just kept going. It was a dangerous storm. The costs of recovering from it are enormous. But I loved it for at least three reasons. First, it reminded me of the years I was growing up in New Rochelle (after my family moved from the Bronx) when snows like this were more common and my brother and I would make a small fortune by going out and shoveling neighbors’ walks and driveways (A “Norman Rockwell scene” you see none of today when kids apparently have better things to do with their time). Second, it meant a likely extension of the ski season (about which I make a note below), and third, and most important, it allowed me to open my front door on the morning of the 23rd and see the near whiteout and magnificent accumulation of snow that enhanced the view everywhere I looked but perhaps even more important allowed me to hear the sound of the wind and absolutely nothing else. The silence was profound, almost primeval. It actually takes a bit of getting used to silence in today’s world. But this reminded me of a time that I was in Nantucket in a battered old house on the north shore of that island back before it was a summer destination for the private jet set. Down the hill was a beach and one night my wife and I took our very young kids down there, wrapped in heavy blankets against the cold evenings, to look at the stars. Utter silence except the lapping of the gentle waves on the bay side of the island. Shooting stars. Every constellation visible and great clouds of stars floating in the dark night sky. A feeling that you were both alone and an integral part of the universe with infinite connections. Looking out my front door in the middle of this blizzard I had the same profound feeling. What a gift.

Speaking of snow, I took my family up to Vermont for five days of skiing in February. I had been a good skier, had even skied the “Front Four” trails at Mount Stowe (certainly among the toughest ski runs in the country) and had taught my three children to ski pretty well. Now my granddaughter wanted to learn how to ski so off we went, me figuring it would be like riding a bike: after a couple of minutes everything would come back to me despite my having last been on a ski slope over 22 years ago. Well, after four days my granddaughter had gone from never skiing to easily handling intermediate slopes, my daughter had quickly remembered that she had been a very accomplished skier and was carving beautiful turns on the slopes, and I was reading a novel in the cafeteria, having discovered after only two runs on the first day on the mountain that my knee was not up to the stresses of sliding down a mountain while making sure you turn enough in order to avoid becoming a human missile. I think I usually maintain a very good perspective, but I have to admit that my shortcoming here was quite disturbing. For perhaps the first time I felt truly old. I’ve been a very good athlete all my life. That I suddenly could not do something that I had always thought of as relatively easy was a blow. I’m tempted to try one more time, this time using a knee brace and seeing if I can maneuver enough with it to enjoy the ride, but I suspect I am done with the sport. I should leave the insane attempts at comebacks to Lindsey Vonn.

Since my last letter I have had my work shown at Art.Fair.Mont in San Francisco as part of San Francisco Art Week. That was successful enough that a gallery in San Francisco has asked me to consign some paintings to them to present to their clients in the Bay Area and along the Pacific Coast and consider a close relationship with them going forward. They are pretty young, pretty aggressive, and very innovative in their thinking about how to present art both in a gallery and outside its boundaries and I look forward to seeing how this relationship develops. I’ve also had some further dealings with museum curators who are interested in my practice and some interesting discussions with a number of gallery Directors in New York. I have been interested in the latter because after a wonderful few years with the woman who was the primary “champion” of my work I decided that her being based in Paris meant that while I intend to continue to work with her in Europe I am in need of a local partner in New York and therefore am on the lookout for a gallery with which to partner up. This is an interesting time of transition in the art world and it seems everyone is trying to figure out what role they can play going forward. I know my role: paint the best work I can produce and try to have it seen by as many people as possible. I have been offered an opportunity to have a permanent exhibition space in New York City and it’s an intriguing idea that I hope to delve into, but given my interest in “legacy” I am still looking for a gallery that will be the kind of partner that will be interested in “championing” my work in conversation with institutions and collectors. Of course, every artist wants that and only an extremely small fraction of working artists are fortunate enough to reach that point. I’m lucky enough to have already been there, but now that I’m making a change I have to at least to some extent start over. Any suggestions or introductions are welcome.

I recently attended a fabulous evening at the Metropolitan Opera where the company mounted the newest version of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay based on the novel by Michael Chabon. The production, the voices, the acting, the staging, the costuming, and of course the music were all outstanding and justly deserved the long standing ovation at the end of the evening. It’s a story of two cartoonists who create a superhero (The Escapist) whose purpose is to fight evil in the form of the Nazis and help the Jews of Europe escape the fate that Hitler has planned for them. It’s a complicated novel and opera but a very short version is that Kavalier’s family in Europe doesn’t escape their fate, he loses faith in their creation The Escapist, joins the Army to kill Nazis, practically tries to get himself killed, sees many of his comrades die in the war, concludes that art doesn’t change anything and cannot stand against evil and is in utter despair. Meanwhile Clay, who is gay, sees his lover sign up for the war and while stateside, and having suffered the consequences both psychological and physical of his sexuality, chooses to help raise the child that Kavalier does not know he has fathered with Rosa, the girl he left behind in New York. That woman, also a cartoonist (and the organizer of an association rescuing Jews from Europe), has created a new character in the form of a female moth (Luna Moth) that she and Clay hope will protect the innocent and restore their faith in justice. In the end, Kavalier is convinced to come back from the war in order to raise his daughter, to work on the new cartoon, and to work on making a shattered world a better place, in part through the publishing of the cartoons, while Clay goes off to write the story of their strange adventure together that becomes the novel on which the opera is based. This core of the story landed hard with me. The world has been shattered by World War II. Kavalier’s family has been murdered by the Nazis. Clay’s lover (who was to play The Escapist in a movie version of their cartoons) was killed in the war. But both Kavalier and Clay go forward intent on repairing that shattered world, and doing so by a combination of family love and art. I have written previously about my strong belief in the concept of Tikkun Olam, the obligation to repair a shattered world, and my belief that art can have a profound positive effect by allowing us connections across time and space. Seeing that acted out on the stage at the Metropolitan Opera House, and remembering reading Michael Chabon’s great novel on which the opera was based, left me in tears. Even if you believe that we exist in a cold, dark, uncaring universe and that we are exiled from what was once a “singularity” that has been broken into pieces, we can still seek to repair it, and we can seek profound connection through beauty and love. And that can give us purpose and meaning. 

Too deep? A bit presumptuous of me? I hope not, but just in case, let me also mention a few other things that are also really important to me. First, John Harbaugh was hired as the new Head Coach of my beloved New York Football Giants and I’m now convinced the team will have a new Golden Age after being in Purgatory for the past 14 years. Second, the baseball season starts in a week and both the Yankees (my team…I’m a Bronx boy) and the Mets are contenders this year even as the Los Angeles Dodgers try to buy their way to a third consecutive World Series win with a payroll that would support a small country. Third, while they may fall short the New York Knicks look to be a championship contender if they can figure out how to help the guy they call “Big KAT” (Karl-Anthony Towns) stay engaged in games and near the basket. I’m a passionate sports fan and some of the best memories I have of my father are either times he was teaching me a sport or when we were attending games together. Connections. They come in all shapes and sizes, but as E.M. Forster said in the epigraph to his great novel Howards End, “Only Connect”.

I wish you all a wonderful spring and welcome any of you to write to me with your thoughts about this letter or anything else. I’ve enjoyed the correspondence I’ve received and consider all of this to be an important part of my practice.

Lastly, this winter the art publisher Skira (Milan) published a truly beautiful monograph on my practice that it is distributing in various book stores around the world, in museum shops, and by other means, including direct sales. On the odd chance that you have an interest in acquiring one (it’s a lot cheaper than my paintings!) there is a link on the CV page of the website through which you can order one directly from Skira. They were the first to publish a monograph on the work of Pablo Picasso so I am in very good company, and very grateful for their interest in me.

Regards,

Abbott Stillman