Painting Diary

Diary

REVIEWS, CONVERSATIONS & INTERVIEWS FROM OUR EDITORS


Margaret Mathews-Berenson (Peeky)

on the legacy of Deborah Remington

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Portrait of Kim MacConnel, abstract painter and key figure in the Pattern and Decoration Movement

Deborah Remington, Mirrors, Installation view, Bortolami, New York, 2024. Images courtesy Bortolami, New York. Photos: Guang Xu.

The Diary section is primarily dedicated to featuring conversations with painters and to critical writing covering current and recent exhibitions around painting. Our aim is to create painting conversations that are both intergenerational and worldwide.

"Everything she saw and experienced seeped into her head, her body, and was expressed in the work she made."

Our opening entry of 2025 is an interview between our Director and Head Writer Clare Gemima and Margaret Mathews-Berenson, the manager of the Deborah Remington Trust. Mathews-Berenson shares the many insights she has gained working on the artist’s estate since 2010—about Remington’s artistic practice, her many travels, and her brave and independent spirit.

Long-Form

LATEST LONG-FORM SELECTED BY OUR EDITORS


MANIFESTO MANIFESTED for a
New Landscape and of Our Current Condition

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Our Long-Form section is dedicated to painters' written output: painters writing about painting. Despite this simple premise, we want to highlight the breadth of invention and play that can come about when painters translate their voices into textual form.

"Homogeneity is the new libido;
Sincerity is the new Viagra."

Our first piece comes from Vivien Zhang, a painter whose interplay between the mediated digital image and painterly mark has produced some of the most exciting and urgent paintings of the past decade. Zhang's piece, "Manifesto Manifested," is an ongoing and continually evolving text, reconstructed from exhibition to exhibition. Begun in 2018, this is the third iteration, and the first of many others we hope to publish over time.

What better way to launch our Long-Form content than with a manifesto on painting in the context of today.

Vivien Zhang's Echo Complex 3, 2021 - Abstract artwork with vibrant colors and geometric shapes

Vivien Zhang, Echo Complex 3, 2021, acrylic and oil on canvas, 200 x 180cm. Image courtesy of the artist and Pilar Corrias Gallery.

Residency

OUR CURRENT ARTIST / WRITER IN RESIDENCE


Tim Wilson, artist in residence at Painting Diary, in his studio

Photo: Courtesy of the artist

Tim Wilson

Painting Diary hosts residencies for painters and writers in a studio space in the heart of Vienna, Austria. The idea is to provide a space in which artists can work, free from outside expectations or deadlines, giving them time to revel in the intimacy of connections made and people met.

Our inaugural artist in residence is Tim Wilson (b. 1970, Newport News, Virginia), who currently lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Wilson is a painter dedicated to shedding light on that which is often overlooked. Taking everyday objects and transitional spaces as his subject matter, he depicts them with a saturated color palette and soft burr that evokes a dreamlike quality.

You can read more about Tim's practice and the residency program