narrative painting – Page 2

December 4, 2021December 2, 2021, by Joan Sullivan

In the Beginning There Was Only Water

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Description automatically generated — In the Beginning There Was Only Water: Panels 19-22, each panel 30″ x 15″, acrylic, oil pigment stick and mixed media on paper, 2021

While some of us taught ourselves to bake sourdough bread or to mend socks during the pandemic, the American painter and arts writer Susan Hoffman Fishman plunged herself into her studio and emerged, a year later, with a revised creation story. The result: a magnificent, nearly 50-foot (15 meters) opus entitled In The Beginning There Was Only Water. Currently on exhibit at the Five Points Gallery in Torrington, Connecticut through December 19, 2021, In The Beginning There Was Only Water reframes the biblical creation myth – in which “man” was granted “dominion” over all the Earth’s plants and animals – into a new, non-human-centric story.

October 11, 2021October 6, 2024, by Art Spiel

MVA Open Studios: Philemona Williamson

Philemona Williamson in studio with work in progress, oil on canvas

Manufacturers Village Artist Studios, located in an 1880’s historic industrial complex at 356 Glenwood Avenue in East Orange, NJ, will feature the work of over 60 different artists at its annual open studios weekend, Friday 10/15 (VIP Preview) and Saturday thru Sunday from 11-5, 10/16 and 10/17.

September 13, 2021August 2, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Becky Yazdan: Finding the Edge of Experience

A person sitting in a chair

Description automatically generated with medium confidence — Becky Yazdan in studio, 2021

Becky Yazdan’s paintings are based on things she encounters in her daily life as well as her memory of events, feelings, and colors. For her the painting process is an active dialogue with the nature of things around her. “The paintings are like dreams—the events of the day reorganized and combined with other events and memories until a new, often surprising reality has taken shape,” she says.

June 5, 2021June 3, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Painting the Narrative at the National Arts Club

In Dialogue with Dee Shapiro

A picture containing indoor, floor, wall, ceiling

Description automatically generated — Installation view

In the group exhibition Painting the Narrative at the National Arts Club in New York City the artist Dee Shapiro brings together six contemporary artists who explore content and form of narrative painting ranging from interiors to landscapes, personal to imagined, realistic to fantastic. Featured artists: Jennifer Coates, Laura Karetzky, Judith Linhares, Ernesto Renda, Kyle Staver, and George Towne. The show runs through June 28^th.

January 19, 2021January 19, 2021, by Etty Yaniv

Christopher Ulivo: The Present is Nonsense

Christopher Ulivo, the LA based painter, takes us in his vivid paintings to imaginary places, from time travel to ancestral family spirits to rewritten myths and histories. His worlds are filled with idiosyncratic, wildly imaginative narratives, where you can sense the painter’s presence as a prolific storyteller.

September 15, 2020September 17, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Ashley Norwood Cooper in Domestic Brutes at Pelham Art Center

In Dialogue with Ashley Norwood Cooper

”How to Draw Your Shoe”, oil on panel, 36” x 30”, 2020.

Ashley Norwood Cooper is an artist and a mother, raising three teenagers in a small town in upstate NY. Her paintings have always dealt with family and home and how the personal connects us to the global and political. She is interested in the schizophrenic role of the artist-mother-wife-teacher and in how to redefine the heroic from a woman’s perspective. Ashley Norwood Cooper is participating in Domestic Brutes and she will present her work in a virtual studio visit hosted by Pelham Art Center on Thursday, October 15th, 5-6pm.

May 16, 2020May 16, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Artists on Coping: Barbara Friedman

During the coronavirus pandemic, Art Spiel is reaching out to artists to learn how they are coping.

Barbara Friedman in front of “Hard Rain” at the opening of “Hauntings”, February 29^th, 2020, at Five Myles Gallery, Brooklyn. The show was supposed to be up through March but closed after a week due to the pandemic. Photo from the Bogliasco Foundation’s weekly newsletter *courtesy of* Arielle Moreau.

Barbara Friedman makes painterly paintings of unreliable narrators in scenarios that are unsettling both narratively and formally. She has had thirty-six solo shows throughout the United States, and reviews of her work have appeared in the New York Times, the New York Sun, The Irish Times, Newsday, Art in America, ARTS Magazine, and Artweek. A group of Friedman’s paintings were selected for the 2007 issue of New American Paintings, and another group for the 2010 issue. She lives, paints, and teaches in New York City, where she has been a professor of art at Pace University since 1983.

January 28, 2020November 15, 2020, by Etty Yaniv

Todd Bienvenu – Stories within Stories

A picture containing canyon, valley, colorful, building

Description automatically generated — Todd Bienvenu, Bain de Pâquis, 88x76in, acrylic on canvas, 2019 .
Courtesy Todd Bienvenu Studio

No matter what Todd Bienvenu chooses to depict in a painting – a male nude lying on a bear skin rug in a Venus pose, a fearless female city bike rider, or a crowded water-park vista- his surfaces consistently pull you in by their bold vitality and idiosyncratic humor. Todd Bienvenu shares with Art Spiel some insights on his process, ideas and studio work.

March 30, 2019March 31, 2019, by Danielle Burnham

Lizbeth Mitty & Dana James: The Thread

at M. DAVID & CO. GALLERY extended thru APRIL 21st, 2019 and an artist talk on April 14th at 4PM with Lilly Wei

Lizbeth Mitty in her studio. Photo courtesy of the artist.

Dana James in her studio. Photo courtesy of Drew Reynolds

I met with rising talent artist Dana James and her mother, veteran NYC artist Lizbeth Mitty, prior to their joint exhibition, “The Thread,” which opened March 15th at M. David & Co. Gallery in Bushwick. It was late February, and the artists were trying to answer the lingering question: Which new works should we display?

The debate was an extension of a conversation that had been running for months. Throughout the creative process, alone in their respective studios, the artists had frequently exchanged feedback on works in progress, eschewing criticism for constructive, “technical” suggestions that served to “open the floodgates” and renew the other’s creative energy.

January 11, 2019May 30, 2020, by Sharilyn Neidhardt

New Narrative Now at M David & Co.

Curated by Michael David and Martin Dull

January 11 – January 27, 2019

Opening Reception Friday Jan 11, 6-9PM

Co-curator Martin Dull pictured with Todd Bienvenu’s painting (left) and Jeffrey Morabito, Kave T-shirt (right)

All images by Sharilyn Neidhardt

The work in “New Narrative Now,” curated by Michael David and Martin Dull at M David & Co. is united by a particularly muscular and aggressive kind of paint handling – unsurprising from a gallery well-known for cultivating abstract expressionist work. The paintings also share lyrical and mythical storytelling qualities. Recognizable figures flicker and bend across these canvases, wading through turgid waters, or wrestling with ropes of paint, or bathing in dreamy color. Animals and toys crowd some canvases, women stretch tortured forms across others. Personal mythologies illuminate and infuse each canvas, casting a mysterious spell for the viewer.