About

Years after graduating, I was wandering through the Met one Friday evening with Elizabeth. There was a moment when I stopped speaking in mid-sentence because my old professor was walking past. To my astonishment and delight it was Paul Resika himself.

He didn’t remember me at first, but he said he recalled the cadence of my speaking manner after a while as we toured the galleries together. At one point, an acquaintance of Paul walked by, exchanging a few pleasantries with him. As they parted, the man, probably a fellow painter, asked if Paul was working. Paul replied in his signature baritone, “yes, of course—what else is there?”

I never forgot Paul’s response. That’s what this is about. What else is there? For me, the distillation of age leaves nothing else other than the effort to understand formalist lessons and to share them, most especially to share them, while there’s a little time left, in deep gratitude for the chance to do so.

I reminded Paul that evening at the Met that he said I possessed “a glimmer of hope” at the interview for admission to his program some 15 years earlier. Still trying to prove to myself he was right.