Ruth Erickson

n my conversations with artists, teachers, and especially curatorial colleagues over the past few years, painting has been like a central trunk from which branches of dialogue, debate, and close looking grow. For some, painting’s centrality has been experienced as a return, an echo of something they took part in during the 1980s or ’60s or ’20s. For others, a continuation. As someone who spent the late ’90s and early 2000s immersed in video, social practice, and installation art, I have experienced painting as something quite new. One branch of conversation has focused reflects these modes and demonstrates their vitality and possibility in the hands of living artists today.