Absurd as sunsets and autumn foliage, Bear Cliff has been attempted by nearly everyone who wielded a brush in the ‘tradition’; all with an inexplicable urge to people its stark heights with gamboling children and ladies with parasols. Does this impulse reflect upon the abstraction question? In fact, the precipitous tilts and chasms of this masonry beach at the brink do not tolerate careless moves: many have fallen. The same cataclysm that fractured the columns of the mountain to its roots hurled boulders about its crest. They remain in a blast of silence, poised in freeze-frame positions; white silhouettes against the basin of Shawangunk valley, where distant reflections on steel, glass, water, glint and twinkle like real stars in an upside-down heaven. It is still more difficult to believe that, today, sun pours through cloud-sieve in palpable rays, vertical pillars holding up grand old dome — vast and empty at the moment. A small, silent plane unexpectedly flexes its six-foot wingspan; the red head of a turkey vulture catches the light. We are looking down at hawks, squinting into haze and steady wind which erodes sun-bleached quartz conglomerate and stunts pitch pines. The warm updraft at the edge brushes our cheeks.
— Pat Passlof, New Observations #34, Copyright 1985. ISSN #0737-5387

Published by New Observations Ltd., 144 Greene St. NY, NY, 10012
Guest Editor: Shoshona Kalisch
Publisher: Lucio Pozzi

One time, in frustration, or defiance, I grabbed three or four brushes with different colors of oil paint and started smearing them around. “Now you’re painting,” she said. She let me cut my classes and paint all day.

In my 20s I lived on Staten Island and would hang out with her when she taught her classes there. By then I was a confirmed abstract painter, and I lapped up those New York School and Black Mountain stories, straight from the horse’s mouth. I heard about all the other students leaving de Kooning’s class. I argued with her about Ouspensky. She told me Monet was better than Cezanne. About now, 25 years later, I am finally ready for her next lesson.