In the first week of February, I traveled to Paris to see the Gerhard Richter retrospective at Fondation Louis Vuitton. I am deeply grateful to the Great Meadows Foundation for awarding me an Artist Professional Development Grant that made this possible. The grants support Kentucky artists by funding travel outside the state to experience work firsthand, then return home with insights that directly impact their practice. It is an investment in both the artist and the creative life of our region.
Richter’s work spans decades and moves between representation and abstraction. I have long been drawn to his abstract paintings, though I had only seen a few in person before this trip. To stand in front of so many at once was powerful. He paints from photographs, blurs images until they feel like memory, then shifts into large abstract works built through layers of paint pulled across the surface. Across more than 270 works, you see a painter continually testing what painting can do.
I viewed the exhibition over two days, which deepened my experience. On the first day, I absorbed the scale and breadth of the work. Returning the next day allowed me to slow down and look with greater clarity. Paintings that initially felt distant began to connect. I noticed relationships the curator was guiding us toward through proximity and contrast. I began to recognize how one body of work informs the next, and how decisions in one period echo decades later.
The watercolor and ink drawings were among the most inspiring for me. Their immediacy and sensitivity resonated deeply. They reminded me of the importance of touch and responsiveness and affirmed my desire to bring more of that directness into my own practice.
While in the galleries, I documented my responses to specific works that resonated. This exhibition strengthened my commitment to experimentation, to accepting uncertainty, and to allowing change within the painting. It affirmed that a sustained practice can evolve dramatically while remaining coherent.
The impact of this experience will stay with me for years, shaping not only the paintings I make next, but how I think about the long arc of a creative life.
