Comet Atomic
Author's posts
Dec 27 2025
Bruno Bobak: War Artist, Modernist & Painter of Canada
Bruno Bobak’s paintings can move from the devastation of a European battlefield to a quiet Canadian river, from crowded human figures to forests, farms, winter streets, and brilliantly colored landscapes. The subjects changed enormously across his long career, but the paintings remained connected by an energetic approach to color, form, and observation. Born in Poland …
Dec 26 2025
Ahmad Jamal: Poinciana, Space & the Art of the Jazz Piano Trio
Listen to Ahmad Jamal for a few minutes and one of the first things you may notice is what he does not play. A phrase arrives, stops, and leaves a pocket of silence behind it. The bass continues moving, the drums establish a subtle rhythmic pattern, and Jamal waits just long enough to make the …
Dec 23 2025
Dorothy Dehner: Abstraction, Sculpture & a Career on Her Own Terms
Dorothy Dehner spent much of her early artistic life working in the shadow of circumstances that made it difficult for her to develop the career she wanted. Yet when she finally gained the freedom to devote herself fully to art, she embarked on an extraordinary second act. Beginning seriously in sculpture when she was already …
Dec 21 2025
Achille Vianelli: Watercolor, Light & the School of Posillipo
Achille Vianelli captured Italy one luminous corner at a time. Sunlit piazzas, quiet church interiors, steep coastal roads, ancient arches, fishing boats, distant mountains, and narrow streets all became subjects for an artist with an extraordinary ability to translate atmosphere into watercolor. Born in Porto Maurizio in 1803 and active for much of the 19th …
Dec 19 2025
Phil Ochs: Protest Songs, Folk Music & the Turbulent 1960s
Phil Ochs believed a song could function almost like a newspaper column. Armed with an acoustic guitar, a sharp eye for hypocrisy, and an instinct for turning current events into memorable lyrics, he became one of the defining topical songwriters of the American folk revival. He sang about war, civil rights, labor, political campaigns, social …
Dec 17 2025
Irving Petlin: Pastel, Protest & the Art of Bearing Witness
Irving Petlin made pictures that can feel as though they are emerging from memory just before they disappear again. Figures hover inside pale landscapes. Bodies dissolve into dusty fields of color. Buildings, forests, animals, and fragments of architecture appear without fully explaining themselves. Even when his subject was a recognizable historical event, Petlin rarely approached …
Dec 15 2025
Chihiro Iwasaki: A Tribute to Japan’s Beloved Illustrator
Chihiro Iwasaki: Watercolor, Childhood & a Lifelong Wish for Peace Few artists have captured childhood with the tenderness and immediacy of Chihiro Iwasaki. Her children rarely pose. They splash in baths, stare out windows, clutch flowers, sit alone in thought, or move through pale landscapes that seem to dissolve into watercolor around them. With only …
Dec 14 2025
Jane Birkin: Film, Music, Fashion & an Unmistakable Anglo-French Style
Jane Birkin became such a familiar part of French culture that it is easy to forget she arrived in Paris as a young English actor who barely spoke French. Over the following five decades, her soft British accent, unconventional singing voice, effortless clothes, film performances, and deeply personal collaborations turned her into something much more …
Dec 13 2025
Emily Carr: Forests, Modernism & a Singular West Coast Vision
Emily Carr painted forests as though they were alive. Cedars twist upward, branches seem to breathe, clouds roll across the sky in great waves, and deep green landscapes pulse with an energy that feels almost impossible to contain within the edges of a canvas. Her mature paintings of British Columbia are unmistakable, yet the path …
Dec 11 2025
McCoy Tyner: Power, Harmony & the Sound of Modern Jazz
McCoy Tyner could make a piano sound enormous. His left hand struck rich, ringing chords with almost orchestral force while his right hand released torrents of notes that seemed to tumble effortlessly across the keyboard. The sound was muscular without being heavy, rhythmically fierce without sacrificing lyricism, and immediately recognizable after only a few measures. …
