Margaret Randall on Elaine de Kooning

“It's time for a disclaimer. Elaine de Kooning and I were friends. She was a great mentor to me, and in memory continues to be. We met during her time at UNM. I was an incipient poet, she already an accomplished painter. But I was able to introduce her to the bullfights in Ciudad Juárez, a subject she would paint for many years. I followed her back to New York (as did several others who knew her here) and we remained friends until her death. March 12th would have been Elaine's 97th birthday. I wished this honoring of her work could have happened when she was alive, or that she might have lived to experience it.”

“Gesture is so well executed in Elaine's portraits that in a number of them she deliberately erased some or all of the facial features. This is true in several images of the painter's brother Conrad Fried, and of her fellow painter Fairfield Porter. An early critic, otherwise complimentary, wondered if she was unable to draw or paint faces. Nothing could be further from the truth, as many of her other portraits attest. But Elaine often said the face's features change with age, while the way one sits, stands or moves is more of a constant throughout one's life. Her figures often seem to be quiet and in movement simultaneously.”