Tag Archives: Painting

Melissa Meyer

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Artist’s Statement

Included in this portfolio of images are works that trace the history of my interest in and artworks using collage, as well as recent collages influenced by this trajectory. My work is abstract with many visual references including: the improvisational and emotional qualities of Jazz and dance; the sinuous gestures of an actor moving across the big screen; the tonal qualities of Film Noir; handwriting, urban graffiti and linear natural forms; the logic of architecture; and the colors in a landscape.

I am very aware of the importance of collage in forming contemporary aesthetics. As a method, collage encourages layering, shape-making and juxtaposition, all of which I apply to my work, from my paintings to multi-panel public works using expanded media. As a young woman artist, one of the important aspects of my research was to find role models and forerunners. I observed that many mid-20th century women abstract artists made collages, including Ann Ryan, Alma Thomas and Lee Krasner. This culminated in my essay written with Miriam Schapiro, “Femmage: Waste Not Want Not, An Inquiry into What Women Saved and Assembled,” published in Heresies’ fourth issue (1978). I discovered a collage sensibility was evident in quilts, devotional pieces and scrapbooks made primarily by women in the 18th century, far before Picasso and Braque. This collage sensibility, marked by recycling, mixed-media, making art from remainders and remembrances, is echoed in the mid-century abstractionists I connected with. A famous example is Krasner, who reused her works on paper in her collage works, both large and small.

In my own work, collage has played an important role in developing new ideas and reusing old ones, from “The Green Woman,” my early (1974) collage painting for Ms. Magazine, to my most recent work. Artist residencies have provided opportunities to connect older works like “The Green Woman” and “Provincetown Summer” to the newer collage “Rearrangement Series.” In my “Residency Sketchbooks,” from which I include specific pages, I cut up and combined watercolors in an improvisational manner, which directly inspired a group of works based entirely on cutting up and rearranging previous watercolors. Another influence in this series has been the late large collage works of Jean Dubuffet, about which I wrote an essay in 2016 for the popular Painters on Painting blog, and which I was able to revisit in an exhibition this past spring 2018.

Melissa Meyer lives and works in New York City. She is represented in New York by Lennon Weinberg, Inc. Her work has been exhibited widely nationally and internationally. Meyer’s development has been surveyed in two traveling exhibitions, and she has completed public commissions in New York, Tokyo, Shanghai, and for the new U.S. Embassy in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. Her work is included in major public and private collections including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, MoMA, Brooklyn Museum, Guggenheim Museum, and Jewish Museums. Residencies and Awards include: Rome Prize, NEA grant, Pollock Krasner Grant, Yaddo, MacDowell, Bogliasco, and BAU Institute.

Gabe Brown

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Artist’s Statement

As an artist, I search for meaning in the unknown. Exploring a world beyond my own tangible reality, I see myself as part of a larger, richer universe. A universe that expands further through a conscious effort to embrace the meaning of that which I create in my own personal life, as well as the experiences generated by the lives of those around me.

Art is like magic, an illusion created by the force of humanity. Our choices in life can be amazing portals for adventure. For me, these possibilities present themselves through the process of painting: researching potent images, configuring them on canvas, and struggling to imbue them with a sense of myself and my own wonder at the enormous complexity of the world. I seek a better understanding of truth in nature with constant comparison and evaluation of opposites. Using a visual vocabulary derived from a world that often goes unnoticed, everyday events such as conversations between birds, forces that drive water, or the cellular structure of plant life, I begin to reinvent reality. This experience enables me to come closer to an understanding of how it is that I identify with the world. The concerns that arise from this process reveal themselves to me as subversive dualities existing in both the natural world and the man-made. When we consider something in a new context, having unearthed the intrigue that lies just beneath the surface of the seemingly simple, the original meaning is altered and brought to a new level of consciousness, creating metaphor. In this way, I can see, and show, that the natural world is not unlike our own man-made realm, an alternate universe filled with an active power to recognize desire, temptation, and frailty.

The paintings create a secret recipe for an inner landscape of the human condition; narrative vignettes that are both alluring and mysterious. Nature, and those elements existing in its microcosm become metaphors for a strange and at times super reality, a parallel universe that questions the natural scheme of life itself.

Gabe Brown was raised in New York City. She received her BFA degree from The Cooper Union and was awarded a Full Fellowship to attend the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. She went on to receive her MFA in Painting from the University of California, Davis.

She is a 2018 recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Fellowship in Painting, a Sustainable Arts Foundation Award, and one of two artists chosen to be included in a public arts project for ArtsBridge. She has been a Resident Fellow at The Saltonstall Foundation, Anderson Center at Tower View, and Women’s Studio Workshop. Her paintings and works on paper have been exhibited nationally in galleries and museums such as Kenise Barnes Contemporary Art, Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art, Butters Gallery, Matteawan Gallery, Adah Rose Gallery, The Saratoga Arts Center, Garrison Arts Center, John Davis Gallery, ArtsWestchester, Schweinfurth Arts Center, SUNY Brockport, The Horticultural Society of New York, Albany International Airport, Sears-Peyton Gallery, and Carrie Haddad Gallery. Her work is included in both public and private collections.

Gabe Brown is an Adjunct Professor in Painting and Drawing at Fordham University and SUNY New Paltz where she has received three Merit Awards for Professional Achievement. She lives and works in the Hudson Valley.

P. Elaine Sharpe

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Artist’s Statement

Paint as material belongs to the sense realm, a phantom limn of touch. As a process painting might become a brush with pleasure, a stroke that rubs the wrong way, a sideways glance, a covert encounter. I can’t stop. I don’t want to stop. Paint pushes me but I push back.

Hug-distributing elder, orphan, brave woman since birth, shit-disturber, badass, artist, raised by a sociopath, OCD by nurture, pleasure-bot, married for contrast, mother of one.

Jennie Ottinger

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Artist’s Statement

My current work is about women. Although it’s becoming more recognized in this current moment, it has always been clear that clubs, books, movies, etc. that are about, for, or by women are thought of in a lesser subcategory. It’s popular in certain circles to dismiss groups such as cheerleaders and sorority members and, though I understand the criticisms, both institutions were created by women who just wanted the same opportunities as men. This tension between what looks frivolous and what in another light is actually feminism is why I’m so interested in these groups. They are also a microcosm of power dynamics. I use the positioning of figures and their poses, colors, uniforms, and scale as well as the baggage of stereotypes to explore the nuances of the hierarchies within and between groups. What are the unwritten rules, and do we claim power or willingly give it away to be polite?

Jennie Ottinger was raised in Massachusetts and currently lives in San Francisco, CA. She got her BFA from California College of the Arts and earned an MFA from Mills College. She has exhibited extensively in the San Francisco Bay Area as well as in New York, Miami, Dallas, Los Angeles and London. She is currently an Affiliate Artist at Headlands Center for the Arts.

Sarah Lutz

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Artist’s Statement

The subtle contradictions that exist within a painting are what interest me most and sustain me in my practice. I want my work to be beautiful, but at the same time unsettling; serious, but with a comedic aspect. I create a narrative around these ideas while the work is in progress and believe that the inherent contradictions that emerge add another level of richness to the world within the painting.

Although rooted in an abstract tradition, my work makes clear references to the natural world. I spend as much time as I am able near the water: listening, watching the light, collecting. It is my intention that the images depicted, while not recognizable per se, be believable and exist logically within the environment of the painting.

Subject matter and process are seamlessly interwoven; the way each painting evolves, both technically and conceptually, is of especial interest to me. I emphasize the pure physicality of my materials while also exploring their alchemistic possibilities. My hope is that a compelling tension exists within these paintings, and that they feel familiar while hinting at something ethereal and unknown.

Sarah Lutz was born in Madison, Wisconsin in 1967, but lived most of her childhood in Vermont and Guatemala. Her paintings and prints have been exhibited widely, including solo and group exhibitions at The Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, MA, The Richmond Art Center, Windsor, CT, INK Miami, the E/AB Fair, The Tang Teaching Museum and Art Galleries at Skidmore College and The Painting Center, Lohin Geduld Gallery and Lori Bookstein Fine Art in New York. Her work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Provincetown Art Association and Museum, The Tang Museum, and The Art in Embassies Program. She has exhibited annually in Provincetown, MA since 2002, where she is represented by The Schoolhouse Gallery. In 2013 Lutz was interviewed by Jennifer Samet for Beer with a Painter for Hyperallergic, and in 2015 she was the subject of an Artist Profile in Provincetown Arts Magazine.

William Eckhardt Kohler

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Artist’s Statement

My paintings are built from a merging of the languages of representation and abstraction with mythological overtones. I prefer to maintain a pictorial fluidity between the observed world, internal/symbolic content and the formal demands of each painting. This fluidity mirrors the act of painting as a give and take between artistic intent and what emerges. I hope to engage the viewer in a journey of discovery that is analogous both to the journey of making a painting and the journey of transformation in life.

William Eckhardt Kohler received a BFA (1985) from The Maryland Institute College of Art and an MFA (1987) from The School of the Art Institute of Chicago. He has exhibited throughout the United States and internationally. He lives and works in New York City while maintaining a second studio in Chicago. He has taught at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago, American Academy of Art, Harold Washington College and Indiana University, Northwest. Several times a year he leads transformational retreats for men. Kohler is represented by Linda Warren Projects in Chicago.

Lou Beach

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I always begin a picture with the intention of creating something poetic, but invariably end up with a cartoon.
He became. He ate. He shat. He made stuff. He slept. He died.

Brenda Goodman

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Artist’s Statement

Most of my work comes from many marks I put on the surface. Then one shape pops out and starts to speak to another shape, and I just sort of put them in touch with each other until a feeling emerges and I develop it. When I worked earlier with symbols, I created the shapes. I would have something or someone in mind and draw those shapes until one appeared, and I would say, “That’s the one!” Later the marks were all from my unconscious. It becomes a very intuitive process. I am as surprised as the viewer very often because I don’t always know why or how I arrived at a certain painting, but what I do know for sure is it is from my gut and it’s honest and real and speaks its truth. Sometimes they reveal something to me; sometimes it’s not so clear. But either way something strong and emotional is being communicated.

In between my primary interest of abstract /figurative work I do series of self portraits which always satisfies a deep emotional need in me.

I would say endurance is just built into my constitution. I don’t do things halfway or give up easily. If I lose something I will spend hours, days, or weeks till I find it. I resolve every painting I do and won’t let it leave the studio until it feels absolutely right to me. At almost 74 now, my knees and back are giving me trouble (welcome to the club), but I won’t stop painting what is in my heart, and I will never retire! Anyway, have you ever heard a painter say they have retired? No….they just paint till they can’t anymore.

Brenda Goodman was born in Detroit, Michigan in 1943, studied at the College for Creative Studies, and moved to New York City in 1976. Since 1973 she has had 38 one-person shows and been included in over 200 group shows in galleries and museums throughout the United States, including the 1979 Whitney Biennial, Edward Thorp Gallery, Nielsen Gallery, David & Scweitzer Contemporary, and Jeff Bailey Gallery. Her work has been reviewed in Art in America, New Yorker, Brooklyn Rail, Hyperallergic, The Detroit Free Press, and Huffington Post and is included in a number of collections such as Agnes Gund, Santa Barbara Museum, and Detroit Institute of the Arts. She has received fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts and the New York Foundation for the Arts. In 2015, she was included in the American Academy of Arts and Letters annual invitational and received an Award in Art. In May 2017 she received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from her alma mater. Since 2009, she has lived and worked in the Catskill Mountains.

Nathan Brujis

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Nathan Brujis was born in 1971 in Lima, Peru. He studied art and philosophy at Brandeis University and graduated from the American University of Washington with a master’s degree. He has been awarded the Deborah Josepha Cohen Memorial Award for Excellence in Painting in 1992, the New York Studio School Faculty Award in 1994, and il Premio per la Pittura Lorenzo il Magnifico at the Florence Biennale d’Arte Contemporanea in 2001 and 2003. He has exhibited extensively in New York, Lima, Peru, and Italy. He lives and works in New York.
Artist’s Statement

My paintings and drawings have evolved over time and continue to do so. They have undergone several shifts, like the one in 1996 when my work became completely non- objective. At that time I abandoned any direct representation of recognizable objects in favor of the abstract forces of two-dimensional images to convey the meaning in the works. Nevertheless, the works continued to carry the feeling of nature. I allowed them to remain on the side of the expressive and lyrical through a painting process of instant reaction and subconscious image searching. I never know what a work is going to be when I begin. Each piece is its own search, related to other works of the same period via form and content. Some works find themselves quickly while others take years to make. Some are like a song or a short story while others are more like a complex symphony or novel.

All the paintings and drawings arrive at their own image. To achieve this image, I allow personal experiences, events and ideas of the times, nature, mood, my environment, the art of the past, and most importantly the visual language I have developed over the past 14 years, to come together and create a sense of place. This place, a window or mirror into a landscape, still life, or por­trait, made up of simple geometric forms arranged in layers and organized in groups, solidifies into a multidimensional experience of color, space, meaning, and light.

Mie Yim

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Artist’s Statement

As a Korean-born artist, I am interested in the intersection of Asian pop visual culture and American post-war painting. My oil paintings are portraits of animal-human hybrids. They are beings that have gone through some kind of transformative journey, through the process of built up of form and figure and paint and surface. Erasing, rendering, smearing, modeling. I like the tension of having the range of illustrative figures, then loose, floppy paint obliterating the figure, letting abstraction come through, finding the balance. In my paintings, I foster multiple positions in the cultural, anthropomorphic and art historical identities.

As a child, I was weaned on Hello Kitty and various other hopelessly cute dolls and fluffy animals. Later, as an art student in United States, I felt nourished by Phillip Guston, Willem DeKooning, and also Italian painters like Caravaggio. I think of my characters as distant cousins of imagined creatures, avatars of anxiety, lust and longing. They iterate playfulness with dark underpinnings. Maybe underneath the sugary puff balls and banal gaze, it’s all guts and turmoil and existential crisis. I hope the viewer can sense the edge of East/West, Abstract/Figurative.

The fragmental element in my life becomes whole in my art.

Mie Yim was born in South Korea in 1963. She grew up in Hawaii, earned a B.F.A. from the Philadelphia College of Art, and spent a year at the Tyler School of Art’s program in Rome. Her work has been displayed in numerous international exhibitions, including solo shows at Lehmann Maupin Gallery and Michael Steinberg Fine Arts in New York as well as the Galleria in Arco in Turin, Italy. She was included in “Selections” at the Drawing Center, and her work has been shown in group exhibitions at the ATM Gallery, Feature, Inc. and the Ise Cultural Foundation in New York, as well as Johnson County Community College in Overland Park, Kansas and The Weatherspoon Art Museum in Greensboro, North Carolina. She has been selected for the AIM program at The Bronx Museum of the Arts and the Jurors Award at N.Y.U. Gallery. Her work has been collected at such places as the Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art in Kansas City and the Chambers Hotel in New York City and published on the back cover of a textbook called “Social Text” by Duke University. Her writing has been included in “THIS,” a Collection of artists’ writings edited by Susan Jennings. She is the author of a book called “A.B.C. of S.E.X.” and a recipient of a New York Foundation for the Arts Painting Fellowship. She lives and works in New York City.