White Rooster Studio

Raphael, Gabriel Munter and Robert Rauschenberg in NYC

When I started planning my recent trip to New York City last fall, seeing the Raphael exhibit at the Metropolitan Museum was not on my radar. I wanted to go to NYC to see the Gabriele Münter’s at the Guggenheim, the Raphael’s just happened to be at the Met at the same time I would be visiting – a very happy coincidence.

Raphael: Sublime Poetry – The Metropolitan Museum of Art opened on 3/29/26 and will run until 6/28/26.

Please note: If you are planning on visiting the Met to see the Raphael’s, be prepared for larger than usual crowds. This exhibit is being described as a “rare opportunity” and a “once in a lifetime experience”.

Yes, it WAS crowded when I visited, but we arrived prior to 10:30 AM and only eight days after the exhibit opened, so honestly, it could have been a whole LOT busier. As it was, we only had to wait a short time to purchase tickets and were able to walk right into the exhibit… along with hundreds of our new best friends.

And the reviews are 100% right: it IS a once in a lifetime experience. To have that many Raphael’s in one place and to be able to view them up close, is nothing short of phenomenal. And as exciting as it was to view the paintings, I must say that the drawings completely stole the show. The amount of detail and skill is indescribable.

Fun Fact: I found out AFTER I attended the exhibit that April 6th is one of the traditional dates for Raphael’s birthday – how cool is that? 🙂

Some painting highlights below:

Some drawing highlights below:

One of the three tapestries on view:

While the morning was reserved for Raphael and the Met, the afternoon was for the Guggenheim. I am not sure how you tackle Frank Lloyd Wright’s unique museum design, but I find that taking the elevator to the 6th floor and working my way down the spiral works best for me.

First up was a visit to see Collection in Focus | Robert Rauschenberg: Life Can’t Be Stopped | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. The highlight of the exhibit was Rauschenberg’s epic Barge silkscreen, a monumental 32 foot silkscreen that I had not had an opportunity to see until now:

The Rauschenberg’s go down on May 3, 2026, so there is still some time left to see them if you are interested.

On level 4 and 5 you will find Gabriele Münter: Contours of a World | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation. Please note that this exhibition closes on April 26, 2026, so only a couple of days left to view them.

I honestly cannot remember a US exhibition for Munter, so having the opportunity to visit and see over fifty paintings and photographs was hard to pass up.

The exhibit is phenomenal. If you have a chance to view the exhibit, I strongly suggest that you do:

Highlights from Level 5:

Highlights from Level 4:

Highlights from the Collection in Focus | Modern European Currents | The Guggenheim Museums and Foundation:

The Guggenheim announced last month that as part of the Carol Bove exhibition in the spiral, they were revealing a portion of the Joan Miro ceramic mural that is usually hidden by temporary walls was going to be on view. I had absolutely no idea that the mural was there so this was an extremely unique opportunity:

The pictures below are the portion that is available to view, the middle and right pictures are what you can see inside of the cut-out:

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I had come across Gertrude Abercrombie’s work relatively recently and found myself absolutely entranced with one of her paintings when I stumbled upon it at the Currier Museum of Art in Manchester, NH. It has been incorporated into a part of the exhibition “Nicholas Party and Surrealism: An Artist’s Take on the Movement” and the combination of the two works of art was intriguing. After that, I was absolutely hooked: Gertrude’s work, although small, was powerful and made you want to see more:

Thankfully, the Colby College Museum of Art had announced the upcoming exhibition: Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery right around the same time as the Currier exhibit was on view. Minor issue: Colby College is approximately three hours north of where I live, which only meant one thing: road trip!

This exhibition is HUGE and is spread out over two floors. It is well worth the trip to view the exhibit and if you visit during the week, you can pretty much have the exhibit to yourself (as we did).

Gertrude’s work is highly personal and uses repeated motifs, like the ivory tower, cats, tree stumps and picture within picture.

Gertrude Abercrombie: The Whole World Is a Mystery is currently on view at the Colby College Museum of Art in Waterville, ME until January 11, 2026 and is well worth the drive up to view it. For additional information and a peek at the exhibit, please check out: https://museum.colby.edu/exhibitions/gertrude-abercrombie-the-whole-world-is-a-mystery

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If you enjoy the projects, pictures and posts, please see free to comment – feedback is encouraged and is always welcome.

Please check out White Rooster Studio:

1. If you enjoy this blog, please enter your email address by going to the Menu, then the Home Page to have White Rooster Studio’s blog sent directly to you once it is published.
2. You can also follow White Rooster Studio by using the direct links from the blog’s headers.
3. Any questions, comments? Please email whiteroosterstudio@gmail.com

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Copyright @2026 White Rooster Studios. All Rights Reserved.

Basil and I had the opportunity to visit Olana State Historic Site and the Fenimore Art Museum earlier this week. We couldn’t have asked for better weather to explore the Hudson Valley region: sunny and low 70 degrees 🙂

Our first stop on our 2-day visit was to Frederic Church’s home, Olana, even though the home is not open to tour on Mondays, the property is open to the public to view the outside of the home as well as explore the extensive property and walking paths.

There are many areas to just sit and enjoy the views, Basil especially loved the live wood benches:

Olana also had two site-specific outdoor artworks to enjoy during your stroll around the grounds. We were pleasantly surprised when we came upon Ellen Harvey’s installation ‘Winter in the Summer House’ not far from the house. It is quite unassuming on the outside, but once inside, the effect was stunning:

The best part of Olana? The absolutely amazing views of the Hudson River Valley region – we can see why Church chose this spot to build his home:

Our intention was to explore a portion of the nearby Hudson River Skywalk, which is a scenic 6-mile round trip pedestrian walkway, but our tour of Olana admittedly tuckered us out and we still had about 90-minute drive to arrive at our hotel, so we decided to explore the Skywalk on our next visit to the area.

I will admit that our recent adventure has ignited a renewed interest in the Hudson River School and their artists, so I expect that I will be spending some time with them in my studies soon. If you are interested in learning more, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hudson_River_School

The highlight of our adventure was to visit the Fenimore Art Museum to see ‘Mary Cassatt / Berthe Morisot: Allies in Impressionism’ show on Tuesday morning. An opportunity to see work by these Ladies is rare, so for me, this was not to be missed:

In case you are interested, the Cassatt/Morisot show closes September 1st, 2025, so there is still time to see it.

The Fenimore is also showing ‘The Power of Photography: 19th-20th Century Original Master Prints’, which I felt was absolutely incredible. The show features a selection of 120 iconic images by 120 different photographers, unfortunately, photography was not allowed, but the historical and social impact of the work was unmistakable.

The Fenimore also showcased some amazing masterworks:

I am especially a fan of Childe Hassam and was happy that he was represented:

After our tour of the Fenimore, Basil and I were looking forward to spending some time relaxing on the museum’s terrace overlooking Lake Otsego:

Basil and I are looking forward to a return visit, hopefully next summer!

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If you enjoy the projects, pictures and posts, please see free to comment – feedback is encouraged and is always welcome.

Please check out White Rooster Studio:

1. If you enjoy this blog, please enter your email address by going to the Menu, then the Home Page to have White Rooster Studio’s blog sent directly to you once it is published.
2. You can also follow White Rooster Studio by using the direct links from the blog’s headers.
3. Any questions, comments? Please email whiteroosterstudio@gmail.com

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Copyright @2026 White Rooster Studios. All Rights Reserved.

I have been playing with the small pictures and have added a light-ish ink wash of Chinese Black ink applied using a plastic syringe over the past week and a half.

I spent the most time on #1 and, after looking at it for the past couple of days, I have come to the conclusion that perhaps the choice to use the red Sharpie is not exactly working. The idea is closer to what I had in mind; I just feel that perhaps another color would have worked better in this case.

I feel that the four pictures below show more promise and will be spending some more time this week playing with other ideas on how to finish these small studies:

The decision to take a step back and to work on smaller pieces of paper and focus on creating these studies to work out the current challenges I have been experiencing on a larger scale is working out better than anticipated. I am finding that I am enjoying playing with the smaller sections and can visualize how these studies can be applied to my full-size pictures.

I’m curious to see where this will lead.

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If you enjoy the projects, pictures and posts, please see free to comment – feedback is encouraged and is always welcome.

Please check out White Rooster Studio:

1. If you enjoy this blog, please enter your email address by going to the Menu, then the Home Page to have White Rooster Studio’s blog sent directly to you once it is published.
2. You can also follow White Rooster Studio by using the direct links from the blog’s headers.
3. Any questions, comments? Please email whiteroosterstudio@gmail.com

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Copyright @2026 White Rooster Studios. All Rights Reserved.

I have been far too focused on developing new ideas for my work for the past couple of months that I have been absolutely terrible in keeping up with any online Studio Updates. It was shocking to realize that the last update was just shy of a year ago.

Part of the issue I have been experiencing is I have been so obsessed with these new ideas and trying to figure out how to finish the pictures so that they match what I have envisioned in my head, that it has been causing another (thankfully minor) episode of artist block. Essentially, I forgot about the original idea of just playing, which my partner has been stressing for years… and I was just reminded of the benefits of it during a coffee meetup with a college art friend recently.

I have been recently experimented with combining several new ideas together in one picture and had the idea to simply outline the design and started to add some elements from the original Virtues Series:

I started inking in the details of the design before realizing that perhaps this was not the direction I wanted to go in with this idea, so I have hung this on the studio was to think about next steps:

After my coffee meetup, I decided that I needed to step back and to work smaller for a while, to be more spontaneous and JUST PLAY. So, I trimmed out 20 8×7.5 inch pieces of paper (the odd size because I am using scraps from other projects) and in two separate sessions, I came up with some quick designs, the first four are below:

I was worried about trying to add ink washes after the issues I had experienced on my larger pictures, but, surprisingly, this seems to have worked out. There really wasn’t a lot of “grained” washes and minimal buckling so I may be able to introduce the washes on a smaller scale.

I hope to have more frequent updates going forward 🙂

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If you enjoy the projects, pictures and posts, please see free to comment – feedback is encouraged and is always welcome.

Please check out White Rooster Studio:

1. If you enjoy this blog, please enter your email address by going to the Menu, then the Home Page to have White Rooster Studio’s blog sent directly to you once it is published.
2. You can also follow White Rooster Studio by using the direct links from the blog’s headers.
3. Any questions, comments? Please email whiteroosterstudio@gmail.com

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Copyright @2026 White Rooster Stud