Between my stops at PEER and Ed Winkleman galleries last night I happened upon Ashley Bickerton's show of new work at Lehmann Maupin. This Bali-living artist knocks it so far off the island they're going to have to build another ocean to catch it.

A few hours of post-work Maundy Thursday drinking were immediately washed out of my system when I stood in front of these paintings. That tends to happen when you get hit with a big wave. You wake up, and you wake up fast. I had one of those art experiences where everything and everyone around you disappears. The head and the heart get very, very still. It's just you and the painting. You are simultaneously gone, but present. And I can't imagine a better place to be than in the realm of one of Bickerton's paintings.

I go back and forth in regard to Bickerton's work, and judging from a number of conversations I've had over the years most of you do the same. There was no back and forth for me here though. No place to hide. Only escape, and all the weight that it carries.

Famili