Praeterita

'Boardwalk', by Julia Katz, oil on panel, 48" x 60" The latest exhibition at Addington Gallery in Chicago (running until June 1 st , 2010) consists of encaustic paintings by California-based artist Howard Hersh, and extremely strong figurative paintings by Chicago-based artist Julia Katz. After I met Julia Katz at the preview, she agreed to be interviewed about her paintings, which depict people in public spaces, either running or clustered together in crowds. Philip : You work in series, it seems. Is there a common theme to the subject matter of your work? Julia : I like to work in series because I like to develop several pieces at once.  Rotating from one to another while they are in process helps me to figure out what I am looking for with each painting. I’ve been working with a general theme of the human figure in motion for the past several years, after spending many years painting strictly from models posing in the studio.  The idea of painting motion ...

"Repertoire", Mixed media on panel, 40" x 40" The paintings of Marti Somers, currently showing at Addington Gallery , Chicago, are rich compilations of images, words, colors, and textures. Flowers, trees, and leaves share the space in each picture with animals, fragments of patterned paper, layers of thin paint over thick, glazes that partially obscure one layer and provide a new layer to work with.  She almost always works on square panels, whether small or large. This enables her to use the format as a place to play, to move things around, to erase and redraw, to postpone the resolution of the picture until as late in the game as possible. Most often there is an appearance of small shapes dotted around the panels, brought into harmony by bands of lightly scumbled colour. The beauty of the surface stems in part from her use of encaustic, a wax-and-pigment technique that produces a bright, floating look to the painting.  "Conversations", Mixed media on ...