Thomas Torak’s Bread and Wine received the Salmagundi Club Award at the American Artists Professional League 88th Grand National Exhibition. The exhibition, on now at the Salmagundi Club (New York, NY), continues through November 18, 2016.
Thomas Torak, Bread and Wine, 2013. Oil on linen, 24 x 20 in.
When Elizabeth and I moved to Vermont nearly twenty years ago, the first thing we did was create a space to paint. Behind the attached garage there was a 16 x 24 ft. workroom the builder had used as his carpentry shop, which we thought would make a good temporary studio while we settled in.
As I thought about which books are most important to me and my development as an artist, it gradually dawned on me that it would not be a reading list.
There are some paintings I have thought about a lot and with which I have long relationships. The recently rediscovered Velázquez Portrait of a Man at the Metropolitan Museum of Art is one of them.
