Summer 2025

The Great Plains, 2025
Acrylic on Canvas
60 x 60 in

June 23rd, 2025

As a very unlovely, cold and rainy, spring in the New York area blends into the early summer hurricane season (yes, I DO know there’s a season!) it is getting harder to avoid turning these letters into a political rant, but I will limit my comments in that regard to this: I have a painting titled “A Republic if You Can Keep It”, named after Benjamin Franklin’s famous answer to a question directed his way (by someone who feared a monarchy under “King George Washington” was the other possibility) as he exited the Constitutional Convention. The “you” is us. The letter of the Constitution, as great as that document is, is not sufficient to protect the Republic. Norms that have been in place for a century or more will not even “keep it”. It is up to us and complacency is not a valid stance these days. So no rant, just an admonition.

Since the previous letter I was honored by the Bronx Museum at their annual gala and had a roaring good time that night at the Tribeca Rooftop. I know some of you were there among the 503 attendees and I thank you for the support of both me and the museum. There was great entertainment, a fantastic and rather raucous auction of one of my paintings that resulted in a big win for the museum since I had donated the piece toward the cost of its beautiful expansion that is underway, and mercifully short speeches. There was even an after-party that was heavily attended, and an awful lot of friends, fellow artists, curators, gallerists and simply supporters of the arts in attendance. I admit to finding most galas terribly boring but I honestly think this one was great fun. I even made an off-the-cuff speech and managed not to embarrass myself.

Since that evening there have been further developments. A painting of mine was auctioned at the spring auctions at Phillips in New York and went for more than three times the top of the estimated range that the house assigned it. In what is considered a weak market right now that would be deemed a coup, but of course an artist is a fool if he pays a lot of attention to what is happening with his work in the secondary market, and I am not a fool. 

Just a few weeks ago we had a wonderful cocktails-and-viewing gathering at our apartment in the city during which I was fortunate enough to be questioned in front of everyone by George Newell, a brilliant curator and past gallerist. We also invited the guests to ask questions and, happily, a good number of them did and that allowed me to get into a bit of a discussion of my technique and my overall philosophy about painting and life. It was a very warm and engaged group and I was really pleased to have been able to participate in it.

Out of that evening has come a number of very interesting possibilities that can, perhaps, be discussed in my next letter. For now, I am getting ready for a solo show in New York in November (11/6-11/15) and another show in Paris in spring of 2026. I have been fortunate enough to have a number of curators doing studio visits with me over the past few months and now have offers from them to do shows all the way through 2027. The shows in November and in Paris are being curated by Brigitte Mulholland, for whom I have great respect and a great deal of certainty that she is headed toward the top of the art world because she is a gallerist/dealer who always puts the art and the artists first and plays “the long game” rather than seek quick hits that fade over time.

This spring also witnessed my being visited by Barry Schwabsky, Kathy Battista and Daniel Palmer, each of whom has a well-earned reputation in the art community and each of whom has been engaged by Skira, the Milan-based art publisher, to provide text that will be integral to a monograph that will cover a vast majority of my work done through early 2025 and will cover over 110 paintings (plus a public art piece and perhaps a few pieces of sculpture). We’re hopeful that the publication will be available by November when the solo show occurs but it’s possible that won’t be the case since it is a complicated undertaking to get an art book right.

This spring also saw New York experience the incredible high of the New York Knicks reaching the Eastern Conference Finals in the N.B.A. playoffs, and the devastating low when they hardly put up a fight in an elimination game in Indianapolis against the Indiana Pacers and were bounced out of the playoffs just six wins away from a championship. New York is a basketball town. It’s the “City Game” and the energy engendered by the Knicks’ run this season might have solved our national needs for a replacement for oil and gas. Now we will be debating all summer about the front office/ownership decision to fire their coach because it is suspected he cannot take what is a very good team to a championship and someone else might be able to do so. Just to give you a sense of the passions the Knicks stir up, not only did about 10,000 fans congregate outside Madison Square Garden the night of each game (these were folks who couldn’t or wouldn’t come up with the enormous price for tickets to get inside) to watch on giant screens and cheer along with the paying crowd, but as many as 15,000 people filled both Madison Square Garden to watch away games during the playoffs together and Radio City Music Hall on nights when the games were actually at the Garden. We love our Knicks.

I’m going to try to take a lot of time out of the studio in July and August, both because we will have family visiting and because we want to take a number of trips. I am curious as to whether I will really be able to do this because I love being in the studio painting and know I will miss it if I actually stay out of there. Ordinarily, an artist absolutely must get out of the studio, travel, do a variety of other things in order to fire his/her imagination but I’ve been around long enough that I have a huge storehouse of experiences to call upon when I conceive of, and then start, a painting. So I don’t think it would be damaging for me to be in the studio nearly continuously year-round. I am curious to discover just how much I will miss the day-to-day struggle to produce a great painting.

I know there are many things going on in the world that are troubling to even the most optimistic and happy among us. But even in the midst of all that there are things happening that should make us grateful. Did you notice that using a new immunological approach researchers may have found a cure for multiple myeloma, which has been an incurable cancer that ends very badly for all of its victims? Did you notice that scientists have used stem cells to literally grow a backbone (rumor is that there are plans to implant them in at least four Republican Senators)? How about that there are indications that simply pouring water on to a glacier in the Arctic can reverse the loss from melting and keep it from “calving” into the ocean and raising sea levels? There’s plenty more where those came from. This life is a combination of tragedies and joys, the good and the bad. But we’re privileged to have it. We should celebrate it each day.

Have a wonderful summer.

Regards,

Abbott Stillman