I snuck off during lunch to the downtown galleries. It was eerily reminiscent of my bygone days working in the gallery world while simultaneously aspiring to be a fine artist. All seems so much the same. There are still snotty but well dressed girls at the front desk and haughty entrepreneurial gallery owners lurking behind the scenes, but it felt like home. I was moved by most of the artists at Stephen Wirtz and Catherine Clark — my two favorite galleries by far. They each have such strong stables of artists both established and emerging and their shows have such a high level of quality in concept and artistic execution. Anyway, I was also quite taken with the photographer, Luis Gonzalez Palma who was part of a group show at Rena Bransten, who does work that's a little like my old stuff — manipulating photographs with paint, in this case gold leaf and resin. I was seduced by the romantically dark images and sumptuous surfaces of dark gold with hints of vermillion at the edges of the gold leaf squares. I also love the dark somewhat creepy church-like spaces, the sepia old photo feel, and the intense portraiture. I couldn't find any images of the work I saw today, so I hope these older pieces give you enough of a feel for his work.

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