Wolf Kahn Foundation

“With each painting, you have to set up a situation in which you can be surprised. You have to have the opportunity to be spontaneous. I’m really a Platonist and a Kantian. Everyone’s mind contains a Category for Beauty. In painting, each individual painting has its own requirements. When I’m working on a painting I keep going until I meet its requirements. And then I stop. Motherwell said ‘a painting proceeds by correcting a series of mistakes, and that it’s complete when I find one that I can’t correct.’” -Wolf Kahn interviewed by Miriam Kotzin for the Spring 2009 issue of Per Contra . . . Image: White Roof and Tangle, 2005, Oil on canvas, 20 × 28 inches, Credit: Miles McEnery Gallery © 2026 Wolf Kahn Foundation/ARS . . . #wolfkahn #wolfkahnfoundation #abstractpainting #americanart

Wolf Kahn reflected on his time at Yosemite, despite the plentiful scenery, as being isolated. "What saved me was work. I made a great many pastels and small paintings. The tourists turned out to be no problem—tourist pathways are always well defined. All that is necessary is to deviate a few hundred feet from the road, and one can work undisturbed and maintain the illusion that one is alone with nature. Even in the valley, after a short walk through an aspen grove or two I would find myself at the edge of the Merced River settling down to draw or paint the giant El Capitan cliff seen through the intervening trees and bushes. Looking back at the work I did in Yosemite, I find that it wasn't my best. I suppose it helps to be in a happy frame of mind, surrounded in the evening by family and friends in order to do one's best work. As Flaubert said, to do advanced work one needs the support of an ordered, bourgeois existence." -Wolf Kahn in "Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels," 2003. . . . Image: In the Land of the Giant Sequoias, 1996, Oil on canvas, 52 × 60 inches © 2026 Wolf Kahn Foundation/ARS . . . #wolfkahn #wolfkahnfoundation #abstractpainting #americanart

"It is good to travel in America if one searches for chaos. The landscape in so many parts of the country is uncared for, left to take care of itself. There are huge areas where nature, left to her own processes, shows all kinds of disorder: Things are broken, tangled, weedy, falling in all directions. Fields are growing into woods, woods themselves, without any maintenance, become more and more unkempt and impenetrable. There may be a fallen-down cabin amid all that rampant, disorderly growth. The famous landscape-historian J. B. Jackson titled one of his books "The Necessity of Ruins." Seeing remnants of past care and ordered use provides an important contrast in the visual experience. Our passage through native brambles and tangles is slow, painful, and harmful to outer garments and often, skin, but in pictures these impediments allow for a useful carelessness, for textural inventiveness, and for breadth of execution." -Wolf Kahn in "Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels," 2003. . . . Image: Vertical Chaos Painting, 2004, Oil on canvas, 60 × 52 inches Credit: Miles McEnery Gallery © 2026 Wolf Kahn Foundation/ARS . . . #wolfkahn #wolfkahnfoundation #abstractpainting #americanart

Your reminder that May 21st is almost here! The Looking for America Artist Panel featuring Hank Willis Thomas is happening at the Leavitt Theater in Ogunquit — and it’s a conversation you won’t want to miss. 👇 Grab your spot at the link in bio! This program is generously sponsored by Art Bridges. Thank you also to the Wolf Kahn Foundation for their exhibition and program support.

"It was not surprising that, on one of my recent visits to Charlotte we decided to revisit the famous Shatley Springs. I hoped that the usual 'improvements' that overtake even distant parts of our country might not have taken the special flavor off the place. I should not have worried. The same buildings were still in place—appearing somewhat less dilapidated due to a recent coat of paint—and the waters were now dribbling out of some new piping. After lunch the moment arrived when it was time to make a pastel or two. It was very cold, which caused me to work faster than usual, and I suspect my images were affected. One can’t alternate a shiver and a stroke of pastel and not have it show." -Wolf Kahn in "Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels," 2003. . . . Image: Shacks at Shatley Springs, 2002, Pastel on paper, 13 1/2 × 17 1/2 inches © 2026 Wolf Kahn Foundation/ARS . . . #wolfkahn #wolfkahnfoundation #abstractpainting #americanart #NorthCarolina

"By now the Vermont Studio Center is open year-round; it welcomes writers as well as artists, and it has a regular board of trustees, on which both my wife and I are serving to make up for my initial pessimism. A few years ago, I helped to buy an adjacent building that housed town offices and the town gym. Having done this good deed, I feel less guilty missing some trustees’ meetings which I find are mostly taken up with procedural matters that drive me up the wall! Aside from these lapses I enjoy my responsibilities. Not every artist can think institutionally. I’m not sure if I can all the time, but it’s a good exercise for the soul to try to keep institutions together in these anarchistic times." -Wolf Kahn in "Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels," 2003. . . . Image: In Back of the Vermont Studio Center, 2001, Oil on canvas, 52 × 66 inches, Credit: Miles McEnery Gallery © 2026 Wolf Kahn Foundation/ARS . . . #wolfkahn #wolfkahnfoundation #abstractpainting #americanart #vermont

Enjoy an early pastel by Wolf Kahn, paired with his fond words on the time he spent with @emilymasonstudio in Provincetown, Massachusetts. "I spent some summers in Provincetown living on 'the back beach,' but the happiest one was spent courting my wife there in 1956. We rented an upstairs apartment (it was one room with an enclosed porch for a studio and a small deck) overlooking the bay. It was in the middle of things, but we managed to grow a little vegetable garden by the side of the house. We lived cheaply, having very little choice to do otherwise. We went clamming and asked the incoming fishermen for an occasional haddock; the custom among the fishermen was to give a fish to anyone who asked for it and seemed to need one." -Wolf Kahn in "Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels," 2003. . . . Image: On the Deck (Provincetown), 1956, Oil on canvas, 29 × 24 inches © 2026 Wolf Kahn Foundation/ARS . . . #wolfkahn #wolfkahnfoundation #abstractpainting #americanart #provincetown 1d

"The shore bordering the inn is composed of stratified rock. The ever-present seaweed changes color as it is exposed by the receding tide. It changes the color of the water when the tide covers it, making the seawater deeper in color and darker. These changes are fascinating, especially when they take place in one of the small tidal indentations along the shore. Providence, or Ona Barnet, has thoughtfully placed a wooden bench above one of them; one of the challenges of landscape painting is to find such places, where comfort and subject coincide. Is it allowable to notice the sailboats that pass or that are moored near the farther shore? That depends entirely on the picture as its needs unfold. To put in a boat simply because it gives "interest" is not kosher—you're giving too much importance to the preconceptions of the audience. The boat, if it is to be allowed, has to have a pictorial function: allowing the eye to travel in a certain way, balancing another element, adding a necessary accent of tone, perhaps all of the above. Simply to put it in because it's there is not reason enough." -Wolf Kahn in "Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels," 2003. . . . Image: Maine Shore, 2002, Oil on canvas, 16 × 24 inches © 2026 Wolf Kahn Foundation/ARS . . . #wolfkahn #wolfkahnfoundation #abstractpainting #americanart #maine

"At one time I worked near a lake, trying to glimpse the sun on the water through intervening trees. In the foreground there were stakes stuck in the ground with red tape attached. Bulldozer tracks were all around and some of the young trees had been broken, others had their bark damaged. I was annoyed, my bucolic expectations having been violated. The real estate phrase 'unimproved land' occurred to me, denoting land on which no construction had as yet taken place, such land being appraised at a lower tax rate than land with buildings on it. I saw the coming 'improvement' was really deeply damaging the land. Fortunately, at that point, rather than find another spot, Goethe’s dictum occurred to me, and I decided to delight in it. I painted the churned-up ground, the trees strewn in all directions, the sense of chaos everywhere. Since then I incorporate tangles, weeds, overgrown places, and places where nothing is notable in my repertoire. I am able to derive benefit from the American landscape wherever I go, thus avoiding the enticements of conventional 'beauty.'" -Wolf Kahn in "Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels," 2003. . . . Image: Surrounded by Yellow, 2001, Oil on canvas, 32 × 52 inches, Credit: Miles McEnery Gallery © 2026 Wolf Kahn Foundation/ARS . . . #wolfkahn #wolfkahnfoundation #abstractpainting #americanart

"Every window looks out over the Gulf of Mexico, providing excellent sunset watching. During the day I watch the fog (or smog) along the horizon come slowly drifting southward, gray meeting pink against blue. On my first stay I made an 11 x 14-inch pastel from my balcony. About five pastels and four paintings were derived from it. I am still feeding off that light-filled emptiness." -Wolf Kahn in "Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels," 2003. . . . Image: From a Hotel Balcony. Naples, Florida, 1995, Pastel on paper, 12 × 18 inches © 2026 Wolf Kahn Foundation/ARS . . . #wolfkahn #wolfkahnfoundation #abstractpainting #americanart #florida

"A year ago I visited friends in Warrenton, Virginia. Across the valley there was an array of farm structures, all of them painted a light, sour green. Even at a quarter-mile distance that color and the color of the surrounding trees about to break into leaves, two contrasting greens, was spectacular. Armed with my pastel bag, I trudged across the valley. Approaching the farm I saw that not only the color, but the structure and placement of one of the barns was noteworthy. It was built on a rise, atop a fieldstone foundation, with scrubby woods at its back rising above the barn roof. It had been painted green decades ago, so the color was bleached by the weather, and spots of the underlying red lead paint showed through. It was remarkable. It didn’t take long to overcome my scruples, and now, with a couple of quite nice little barn paintings in my racks I feel that, if old habits and convention triumph over moral artistic imperatives this is not to be sneezed at." -Wolf Kahn in "Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels," 2003. . . . Image: Green Barn in Warrenton, VA, 2000, Oil on canvas, 20 × 22 inches, Credit: Miles McEnery Gallery © 2026 Wolf Kahn Foundation/ARS . . . #wolfkahn #wolfkahnfoundation #abstractpainting #americanart #virginia

“One can easily get tired of order, which is, by definition, predictable, convention-bound, habit-prone. There is nothing like a love of order to make artists paint pictures that are prisons of prior experience—most likely somebody else’s. To create new kinds of order is to be truly ‘creative.’ The majority of artists don’t even know that this is the ultimate goal. I must admit that I have only recently become concerned at my own over-use of inherited, conventional schemes of pictorial organization: perspective, big to small as one goes further into the distance, bands of different colors to denote foreground, middle ground, background. Some artists start demanding change while young, others need a lot of time to become dissatisfied; for still others, the fortunate ones, it’s never a central issue. They are the innocents, the art-saints. I am not one of them; I need to think about the necessity of doing something about which I know little or nothing. Hence my search for chaos.” -Wolf Kahn in "Wolf Kahn's America: An Artist's Travels," 2003. . . . Image: West Virginia Winter Tangle, 1994, Pastel on paper, 11 × 14 inches © 2026 Wolf Kahn Foundation/ARS . . . #wolfkahn #wolfkahnfoundation #abstractpainting #americanart #westvirginia