Forget everything I've been saying, and just read this

This recent Katherine Bradford review by John Yau (Hyperallergic blog) sums up so much. It's insightful, concise, and even has a conglomerate dissing of  Eric Fischl, Celine Dion, and Tiger Woods. 

In regard to the generation of women painters who have come into their own after they turned fifty, and to the flawed mindset that negates such occurrences, he says: "Their presence argues for a thorough reevaluation of the canonical thinking that has prevailed in America since the early days of Pop Art. That bankrupt narrative, based on the rather flimsy, narcissistic assumption that the art world got it right the first time, with its own obsession with surface and spectacle, leaves little room for the quiet adventurousness and formal variety of these artists' explorations."

It's important to note that it is the nature in which this group of painters are working, that I find fascinating, and that resonates with me. It's not simply a kinship of clan, or of sameness.

Again, John Yau says it best (this after pointing out that we are in an era where nobody knows what is going on; we have no central paradigm): "The possibility that one could be independent; that one doesn't have to belong to any stylistic tendency or group; and that one need not ally oneself with any of the currently fashionable discourses, is both liberating and daunting, but why should it be any other way? Given the openness of the territory, one should not be surprised by how many artists find a way to be a conceptual artist that paints, for example."