12 January 2026
From a recent Sean Tatol review:
”...the more he struggles the more he reveals himself as consummately tasteful. If I had to guess why, I think it's because his desire is to make a painting, and that reflexive concern with painting-in-itself gets caught in a knot that can't produce the kind of verve that painters are after. Compare this to Pollock: 'My concern is with the rhythms of nature... the way the ocean moves... the Ocean's what the expanse of the West was for me.' In spite of the cheesy existential-primordial tone, he points towards the idea of something he wants to create by the means of paint.”
Taste really is the misguiding master of our times. I'm not immune to it, spent a long formative time honing my own for reasons that now feel embarrassing. But I also remember how during that time there were periods of making that unintentionally (crucially) ignored taste and used whatever tool was handy to capture incidental moments, and the art that resulted has a singular aura. Thinking specifically of carrying my half-broken little early aughts digital Canon around with me in the Big Bear mountains with Joey.