Flowers, Friezes, & Frescoes
by Wendy Artin
November 1st 2024 - January 12th 2025
Opening Reception 6-9 PM, First Friday, November 1st, 2024
Artwork | Catalogue
Dancing poppies, Persian archers and lost civilizations, acclaimed artist Wendy Artin invites you to marvel at all that and more in her latest exhibition, Flowers, Friezes and Frescoes. Her works capture fleeting moments, like poppies in the spring, and the timeless elegance of ancient ruins.
Featuring 50 exquisite pieces, Artin’s delicate mastery of watercolor brings ancient and ephemeral beauty to life, from the 1st-century BC Roman frescoes of Livia’s Garden to the vibrant Persian archers from the Royal Palace of Darius I.
“Watercolor is a miracle where pigments drift as water evaporates until the paint settles in the right place to reveal the image. Whether I’m painting watercolors of frescoes, enameled brick tiles, ruins or red poppies, I want the viewer to feel their love is rekindled for the subject,” said Artin.
From Ephemeral to Eternal
In a series of paintings on poppies, the fragile stems hold up brilliant blooms, like crinkly red crepe paper. "The poppies don’t last long at all. Once picked, the leaves quickly curl up and the petals fall away. I dropped all else to paint them during the short season," says Artin.
The exhibition features the largest landscape painting Artin has produced. The 70 cm x 200 cm landscape is of Rome’s Palatine Hill, home to one of her favorite subjects - the ruins of temples and imperial Palaces of the Eternal City.
The artist also returns to painting the frescoes of Livia’s Garden. Fragmentary and eroded, the frescoes are full of birds and plants, color and washed-out space. "I wanted to go beyond describing Livia’s Garden to capturing the feeling of standing before these 2000-year-old frescoes," she said.
The blues, turquoise and golds of Livia’s Garden are similar to the colors of the frieze of Persian archers, on glazed brick, which would have decorated the facades of the royal Palace of Darius in Susa and are now in the Louvre and Pergamon Museum.
Artin paints them in specific detail in vibrant polychrome, while friezes of a powerful masculine lion and a feminine griffin, also from the Palace of Darius, are more abstract, done almost like a drawing, in sepia.
The artist captures the interplay between the bricks and the gaps between them, inviting viewers to piece together the images. “I love the way the friezes are made up of many different smaller images like pixels on a gigantic multiscreen,” she said.
Within the collection are dynamic male nude studies, reflecting Artin’s ongoing collaboration with live models. These classical figures, caught in fluid motion, echo the transient nature of both human life and once magnificent civilizations.
Artist Acclaim and Awards
Wendy Artin is the Fine Arts winner of the 2023 Arthur Ross Award for Excellence in the Classical Tradition awarded by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA). She studied in the Museum School in Boston and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Please inquire to order Flowers, Friezes, & Frescoes catalogues. We anticipate them to be available later in November, check back for an update.
Gallery hours are by appointment or generally open, Tuesday - Saturday, 12pm. to 5:00pm, Sundays by appointment or chance.
Gurari Collections, 460 Harrison Avenue, Boston MA 02118, +1 (617) 367-9800
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Contact: Russ Gerard - text 617-650-4644