CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 8/22/2018

Like riding a comet: Jack Whitten's 'Notes from the Woodshed'

From March 2 through April 11, 1999, Jack Whitten kept this studio log. Entries include: "Mom, the spirit is with me. I can feel sister Betty Robinson's presence very strongly; she is my golden standard." "If anybody ask what I am doing, tell them that I am directing matter." And "The subject is only a vehicle for another higher order of consciousness. The center is not physical, it is totally cerebral!! My God!! I want the painting to operate on presence not the pictorial." Sandwiched between March 7 and March 9, the note on yellow lined paper concerns Stanley Kubrick, who died on March 7 of that year. Consider that this wonderful, mystical, yet concise document is just one of hundreds included in this collection of Whitten's Notes from the Woodshed (aka private writings), and be amazed.