Just reading that the painter Elizabeth Murray has died.

During the years that I was first learning about the New York art world, she was a towering figure; a vigorous and incisive teacher (she taught at Bard, leaving just before I got there)and a lodestar of integrity. She fought with cancer in the late nineties and after her recovery she was someone whose council I sought in the midst of my own career confusions. Aside from a couple of good humored and tart exchanges, we never had the fuller conversation I hoped for, mostly through my own fault.

One of my happiest days was the one where I heard, indirectly, that she had approved of a decision I made.

Take a moment to find out about her work If you don’t yet know about it.