{"id":6428,"date":"2015-11-22T13:18:31","date_gmt":"2015-11-22T13:18:31","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=6428"},"modified":"2015-11-20T12:52:59","modified_gmt":"2015-11-20T12:52:59","slug":"a-drawing-a-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=6428","title":{"rendered":"A drawing a day"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>

A couple examples of Tom’s warm-up work<\/p><\/div>\n

During the recent afternoon I spent with Tom Insalaco at his home studio, I saw some of the amazing work he\u2019s done over the past several decades. It\u2019s a measure of his humility and generosity that he spent less time showing me his own work than he invested in introducing me to\u2014or reminding me of\u2014great work from other contemporary realists.<\/p>\n

When he could have been pulling big paintings out of storage for me to photograph, instead he handed me a catalog of work by Richard Maury, a slim set of wonderfully printed plates from a show more than a decade ago at Forum. He pulled it out the the midst of hundreds of books Tom keeps\u00a0on his shelves, including the entire catalog raissone<\/em> of John Singer Sargent. Tom has spent a lot of time in Italy and ran into Maury there once:<\/p>\n

\"Still<\/a>

Still Life While Listening to Brahms, Richard Maury<\/p><\/div>\n

“He\u2019s wonderful. In one of his paintings, you can sense the terra cotta under the glaze on a little ceramic jar. <\/span>You can sense the depth of the glaze.<\/em> We found his house in Florence and who comes walking out the door but his wife. I was in Florence and was walking to a church to look at Masaccio, and we stopped a guy with red hair, and he said something and I said something . . . and it was Richard Maury. I didn\u2019t realize it at the time. He was speaking in Italian, but he knew the ins and outs of English. He really had bright red hair back then.”<\/span><\/p>\n

We talked for several hours, and Tom showed me dozens of drawings from a collection of the ones he has done every morning, without fail, on sheets of rag paper he has prepared by tinting them with oil\u2014\u201cIt has to be rag paper.\u201d Working from the overall middle tone he lays down, he creates portraits of people from photographs in the Renaissance manner, adding darker tones the usual way and then highlighting with white. (I recently skimmed through a catalog from the fantastic Durer show <\/a>of drawings and prints at the National Gallery of Art in 2013\u00a0and was surprised by how intensely white Durer\u2019s work was in those highlighted areas.) What was impressive was the size of that sheaf of sketches\u2014Tom draws every morning, first thing, before doing anything else. Up, out of bed, he begins drawing immediately. When he\u2019s done, he gets a little breakfast and then it\u2019s on to his easel at the front of the house.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m guessing that Tom is in his mid-70s now, but hasn\u2019t slowed down at all. He has a better memory than I do, and recalls things I\u2019ve told him in passing about my wife and brother and parents, and also comes up with names of specific paintings by artists who don\u2019t even ring a bell with me. He has no patience with contemporary art, and his recent visit to the new Whitney nearly enraged him when he saw the floor of one gallery space covered with a foot of mud\u2014a recent installation.<\/p>\n

\u201cI don\u2019t know if you\u2019ve been to the new Whitney. Last time I was in there I screamed. I said why don\u2019t you have the art, instead of this? There was a room full of mud, twelve inches deep. They probably thought they needed to call the police. It was chicken shit. They have so many great paintings. Edward Hopper\u2019s\u00a0Sunday Morning.<\/em> Jack Levine\u2019s Feast of Pure Reason<\/em>. Why don\u2019t they hang that?\u201d<\/p>\n

I timidly suggested that the Stella retrospective there now might help ameliorate the effect of the mud, and he allowed that this might be the case, but still . . .<\/p>\n

It\u2019s refreshing to talk with someone so candid and unguarded about how he feels when confronted with much of what\u2019s happened to visual art. What I<\/em> don\u2019t understand, I told him, is\u00a0why a curator in Western New York isn\u2019t putting together a retrospective of Tom\u2019s work, which reached epic proportions in a trilogy of paintings he did to commemorate the death of his brother a couple decades ago\u2014he was a Buffalo police officer and was murdered by a participant in a domestic fight. One moment his brother was walking up to the door of the house; a few seconds later, he was dead, shot by the man he had come to restrain. Those paintings are monumental; but Insalaco has been building on that work ever since, drawing mostly from Renaissance precursors for his methods, with a bit of Dali tossed in. He was told a year ago or so that he has been invited to exhibit more often in the Memorial Art Gallery\u2019s Finger Lakes Exhibitions than any other artist in Western New York\u2014it\u2019s the most prestigious juried exhibition open to all artists this side of Albany. So why isn\u2019t someone putting together a definitive survey of what Tom has done throughout his career? He wasn\u2019t even included in the most recent Finger Lakes. It would be a wonderful exhibit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

During the recent afternoon I spent with Tom Insalaco at his home studio, I saw some of the amazing work he\u2019s done over the past several decades. It\u2019s a measure of his humility and generosity that he spent less time showing me his own work than he invested in introducing me to\u2014or reminding me of\u2014great […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6428","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"yoast_head":"\nA drawing a day - represent<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=6428\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A drawing a day - represent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"During the recent afternoon I spent with Tom Insalaco at his home studio, I saw some of the amazing work he\u2019s done over the past several decades. It\u2019s a measure of his humility and generosity that he spent less time showing me his own work than he invested in introducing me to\u2014or reminding me of\u2014great […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/?p=6428\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"represent\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2015-11-22T13:18:31+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/thedorseypost.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/11\/tom-drawing-1024x1024.jpg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"dave dorsey\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"dave dorsey\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"4 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\\\/\\\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"dave dorsey\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/5f1b414f169df69053f04f66b929fd57\"},\"headline\":\"A drawing a day\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-11-22T13:18:31+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428\"},\"wordCount\":892,\"commentCount\":0,\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2015\\\/11\\\/tom-drawing-1024x1024.jpg\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428\",\"name\":\"A drawing a day - represent\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/#website\"},\"primaryImageOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428#primaryimage\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2015\\\/11\\\/tom-drawing-1024x1024.jpg\",\"datePublished\":\"2015-11-22T13:18:31+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/5f1b414f169df69053f04f66b929fd57\"},\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428#primaryimage\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2015\\\/11\\\/tom-drawing.jpg\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/wp-content\\\/uploads\\\/2015\\\/11\\\/tom-drawing.jpg\",\"width\":2448,\"height\":2448,\"caption\":\"A couple examples of Tom's warm-up work\"},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?p=6428#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"A drawing a day\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/\",\"name\":\"represent\",\"description\":\"the painting life\",\"alternateName\":\"the dorsey post\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":{\"@type\":\"PropertyValueSpecification\",\"valueRequired\":true,\"valueName\":\"search_term_string\"}}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/thedorseypost.com\\\/#\\\/schema\\\/person\\\/5f1b414f169df69053f04f66b929fd57\",\"name\":\"dave dorsey\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/1b459062818b38ed5bb3f68365bc2557f760412a5db1278493176a6a45bb1c8f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"url\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/1b459062818b38ed5bb3f68365bc2557f760412a5db1278493176a6a45bb1c8f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\\\/\\\/secure.gravatar.com\\\/avatar\\\/1b459062818b38ed5bb3f68365bc2557f760412a5db1278493176a6a45bb1c8f?s=96&d=mm&r=g\",\"caption\":\"dave dorsey\"},\"description\":\"I'm a painter living in Pittsford, NY. 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