For many people we have asked recently, 2024 was slog, a challenge, a conflict, exhausting and even a year to rethink what it is we know and what it is we want. The art market dipped and left many uncertain, and a times, a bit of a struggle mixed with some of the best shows we have seen in years (Mickalene Thomas, we are thinking of you.) So what did you think of this year? We have some insight, as we look at the 15 features you read the most in 2024. Last year at this time, I wrote that "Art is a collective, permeable history, yours and ours." This year, we end on a Clayton Schiff painting, looking to a winding road at afar, pondering a bleakness and the road often not traveled. Maybe that is the direction that art needs to lead us... —Evan Pricco
Wendy Red Star, What's In a Name, by Shaquille Heath, Fall 2024
"I think being an artist is a gift, because how often does that happen to an individual in whatever field that they're working in? What I've loved so much about being an artist, which was never conveyed to me at school, is that it could ever go down the way that I've been working. I'm just learning every time I make art, and I am very curious. I love to learn. I love to ask questions, and I realized that making art for me is actually learning. And what I learn, I get to share. Hopefully it is open enough for people to get something out of it, as well. But it truly is an incredible career. It's not without its own problems, but it's been a really wonderful path to take."
Amalia Angulo, Behind the Slightly Sinister Smile, by Evan Pricco, Spring 2024
"My life here involves constant self-discovery, overcoming my weaknesses and shortcomings in order to grow as a person, improve my work each day, and make progress in my life. I left Cuba with my family when I was 14 years old. One of my most cherished memories of Cuba was the countryside that I used to visit with my parents during summertime. I have a deep and intense connection to nature, so arriving here in the Hudson Valley and being able to constantly enjoy it has been a marvel. I love exploring forests, observing plants, and wildlife. There is a strong connection with nature and a rich tradition of hiking, which I thoroughly enjoy. I appreciate the culture here in general, but I'm particularly fond of everything that happens in the state of New York. I feel a strong sense of connection, and while I miss some things from my home country, I consider this place my home and feel immensely grateful to be here."
Clayton Schiff, A Left Turn at the Far Side, by Evan Pricco, Winter 2025
"I do like depicting these fully embodied states, and likely the one that I’ve hit upon most in these paintings is angst. It more than others seems to freeze its hosts."
Saj Issa, The Action Painter, by Evan Pricco, Fall 2024
"I think, circling back to your question regarding the conversation about this and the art world, the reason why I wanted to have such a conservative approach as opposed to being very specific about making protest work was because I felt like this was also an act of resistance on its own, to just make a plein air painting. If I'm able to make this plein air painting, that's very fundamental and goes back to the foundations of pictorial painting. Why can't we talk about it? And if you add that extra context of where it is and at what time in history, then whatever animosity or whatever hostility that you have in response is clearly a reflection of your own nature."
Mickalene Thomas: All About Love, by Gwynned Vitello, Summer 2024
"From my point of view, you can’t think about Mickalene Thomas fully without the Resist work, without these moments where she turns a resistant critical lens at someone like Picasso or even Jet magazine, this conduit of Black culture, an extraordinary register of the Civil Rights movement. But it also had a pin-up calendar and took a position that can be examined on aesthetics, on what beauty is and who is chosen as beautiful, which, from a certain point of view, was something oriented towards the male gaze. Men are looking with desire at women. What does that mean when Mickalene, as a queer black woman, turns her desire, embracing her desire for the Jet beauties of the week, and approaches those women from her point of view, thinking about sexuality through that lens? It’s a very dynamic practice."—Ed Schad
Elizabeth Glaessner, The In-Between, by Shaquille Heath, Fall 2024
"I think we all have tendencies towards certain color combinations or palettes, whether that's innate or learned. I look around a lot and think about color and where it's coming from, whether nature, a screen, or a book. I look at paintings and think about how I could repurpose something. Maybe there's a specific green in a painting, and I can't stop thinking about it, so I’ll make a painting using the green as a starting point and then kind of build from there. But color is all relative, so it’s really about what’s next to it."
Amanda Ba, Frustration and Desire, by Shaquille Heath, Winter 2025
"There's definitely a departure. I think I personally approach every solo show as a departure from my previous work because I have opportunities in between with group shows to sort of continue exploring the tail ends of whatever ideas I was working on. But for a solo show, in order to produce a fairly large body of work, I have to turn my attention to something new. The well be runnin’ dry sometimes."
Nehemiah Cisneros, The Legend of the Wicked City, by Evan Pricco, Summer 2024
When I think about the inspiration for my current work compared to my early work, I think about the aesthetics of biomorphic abstraction. The horror vacui is still prominent in the new paintings. The maximalist tendencies remain, with the composition as dense as possible. The design of framing a form within a graphic, bold contour, along with the vignette, is still prevalent.
Christian Rex van Minnen, Trapped in Light, by Alex Nicholson, Spring 2024
"There have been big moments of transformation in my life, but they don’t always precipitate change in the painting, which is kind of weird. Except maybe this recent shift, but then again, it could just be that I thought about it; whereas I’m usually always on autopilot, not thinking too much about the big picture. That conversation with my son really did have an impact, or maybe it was just a little catalyst to nudge me in that direction. Nothing is a huge surprise or anything; it's just a window."
Noelia Towers, Empathy and Enlightenment, by Gwynned Vitello, Summer 2024
"I guess these motifs are just aspects of my identity. It is important for me to create a universe of symbols for myself. However, I feel like people often focus too much on said symbols, trying too hard to decipher their meaning. It is essential for me to engage with the emotions embedded in my works. A lot of what I paint relates to premature loss of innocence, and the reason I love painting scissors so much is partly due to growing up with my grandmother, who was a seamstress and always had very beautiful scissors of all kinds and sizes around the house, which I found fascinating and dangerous, but so intriguing. Such a utilitarian object can embody much more than that. I have this visual of my child-like wonder being cut by one of the scissors I grew up around. Many of the objects I paint serve as vessels for memories, and I love how seemingly mundane objects and motifs can carry that weight."
10FOOT x TOX x FUME, De-Generations of London Graffiti, by Carlo McCormick, Winter 2025
“I got to see how graffiti functioned in the wild, how to do it on a level that made sense to my identity, more anti-social and crap than the American stuff, which seemed cool and stylish”.
Koak, The Journey to Lake Margrethe, by Gwynned Vitello, Fall 2024
"It comes back to the idea of not being able to untether the works from one another, and the sense that individual paintings come from a collective work, with each one altering the pace or emotional impact within the show. But it’s also about pushing the boundaries of that color."
Maud Madsen, Formative Moments, by Kristin Farr, Spring 2024
"All of my paintings are reconstructions of memories. I don’t believe them to be accurate retellings, as I often conflate memories from different times and places. I find it impossible to separate my adult self—with my trauma, anxieties, and insecurities—from my recollections. I know there was a time when I was free from this feeling of performativity, but I can’t seem to remember it. I struggle with the word nostalgia. To me, it evokes a desire for the past, to return to another time, and I don’t want that. I want to be here and now. I would rather be informed by the past but dwell in the present."
Isaac Psalm Escoto, But He's Still SICKID, by Evan Pricco, Fall 2024
"Being the child of immigrants, there’s very much the multiplicity of many different cultures. And I think, maybe, you even questioned yourself as an adolescent, as in, “What am I? What am I supposed to be?” And here I was obsessed with Japanese culture and skateboarding. Like, what is it? Holding the telescope backwards a little bit, maybe this mural's a little bit of what it is to be American."
Meegan Barnes, LA in Clay, by Kristin Farr, Fall 2024
"It’s an LA phenomenon. Everybody loves IN-N-OUT, including me - and I’m a vegetarian! Even Anthony Bourdain once said, and I’m paraphrasing, “If I were to post a pic of some really interesting people, say, me, Christopher Walken, The Dalai Lama, and Keith Richards in a hot tub, doing bong rips, it would get maybe 4 or 5,000 likes. However, if I simply took an isolated photograph of my IN-N-OUT burger sitting on a table, I would get 50,000 likes in like 9 minutes.” Side note, I do plan on making that hot tub scene one day."
