An Artist’s Archeology of the Mind

Joshua Rothman | The New Yorker | 25th March 2019

This bio piece makes Sacks sound intimidating – literature specialist, poet, Harvard academic and now, at age 69, successful painter. His paintings take years, sometimes having 10 or more layers. Not abstract art, he says, more non-representational. “They are like very slow action paintings … one step at a time. In a certain sense, it’s up to the materials to show me the way.”