From the Roman Studio
by Wendy Artin
November 6th – December 6th, 2015
From intimate portrayals of paintbrushes awash with color to monochromatic ink-like paintings of the figure and classical statuary, the delicate and powerful images of From the Roman Studio waver and melt between abstract mark- making and impressionistic realism.
Reflecting pleasure and nostalgia, Artin’s paintbrush watercolors are a tribute to years of projects of growing a family in Rome. Each spot of paint on the handle of a well-worn brush evokes a joyous moment: the starry blue sky surrounding the children’s beds, the gigantic green cardboard Christmas tree, the brilliant white Roman sunlight on the walls... The images are personal relics of the sort that are found in all our tool closets; they are a simple and profound appreciation of the present as it reveals all of the traces of the past. Age, for Artin, is to be relished.
Wendy Artin’s delicious figure paintings are about immediacy, universality, reality. We can feel the poses of her expressive models: we are drawn into the language of the body, into the space of the paper, into the light as it becomes flesh and contour. Artin’s mark-making captures the crackling of light that shapes a physical body part or gesture, or becomes animate by its definable yet dissolving reality. By observing and painting only the essentials, Artin compels us, as the viewers, to engage with what is not painted, and to visually complete the contour of a shoulder, a back, an arm. Each painting captures and sustains the “magical” moment when illusion is created.
The ancient classical statues of Artin’s paintings are young and alive, powerful and stony, yet tactile and delicate. Each anatomical part, honed to precision by the sculptor’s hand, yields to Artin’s vision to free the subject in her painting: Faces take on expression, bodies become animate, even stone that has become indefinable by age or wear or vandalism has its textures rendered by light in such a way as to reinforce the sense of life and spirit within.
Wendy Artin is a master of watercolor. Her paintings seem to pull the image out of the paper itself, to coax the materials she uses into perfect puddles of paint. As loose as miniature abstract-expressionistic paintings, her watercolors are also so precise as to sometimes appear photographic at first glance. Above and beyond her technical expertise, Artin’s true genius is the way she is able to open our eyes to the heightened beauty in all that she sees.