Judith Linhares, Sphinx, 1990, acrylic and oil on canvas, 54 x 78 inches, in The Artist as Curator at Sarasota Museum of Art. The show is a jewel of facets that include Linhares' dreams and small gouache studies for larger works. Peruse, at leisure, below:
The interior glow of light in Linhares' paintings reflects her love for changing light and temperature from one side of a painting to the other.
Vernacular sources become building blocks for a world in which the sun doubles itself, as do cloud forms in other works.
One of two '80s Linhares tribute to woodpeckers. The artist recounts fortuitous meetings with animals, such as a tete-a-tete with a monkey as a child in East Los Angeles! The woodpecker is a harbinger of good fortune.
Sumptuous, large-scale photographs by Linhares' daughter Amanda Mason portray Linhares and the five artists she selected in their studios, providing insight into processs.
One case for the work tables above.
Classic Linhares in Slope, 2011, Oil on linen, 84 x 60 inches
Detail of patterns, legs, donuts.
Cove, 2010, Oil on linen, 60 x 81 inches, uniting sky and body in a fusion of marks.
Tigress, 2009, Oil on linen, 57 x 60 inches. The seminality of this work is in feminist and painting canons is indisputable, thinking about the work being made now.
In her museum talk Linhares spoke frequently of paintings seen at distance, surprises moving closer and further from the surface. She mentioned more recently, she'd become interested in detail. This near and far phenomenon of paint discloses secrets contingent on position.
A rooster features as a Goya-like protagonist in a suddenly vast terrain of cascading color that loses spatial definition of the larger whole
Legs, logs, sun rays, with roof, cloud, and canopy: the rhythm of line and shape intensifies, as women take it easy. For Linhares, an avid reader of fairy tales, the transformation of individual consciousness through imagination, animating the world.
Stir, 2004, Oil on linen, 54 x 78 inches
Afghan blanket builds rocks offset by line and shape.
The other 80s Woodpecker by Linhares.
Her toys, animals, and a study.
Mary Jo Vath's sock monkey hat. Vath's paintings, made from observation, demand deep staring. The doubling of light to dark, cold light to warm, and soft edge to hard generate deeper, uncanny insight on matter. Scroll to find another Vath below.
Ellen Berkenblit from 2018.
A small study of Leopold, the leopard.
Dona Nelson's Studio by Amanda Mason
Mary Jo Vath's studio by Amanda Mason
Ellen Berkenblit's studio (with Marion St. Material flourescent colors in foreground!)
Karin Davie's studio
Dona Nelson's two-sided painting Apollo's Cockroach, 2017, 93 x 85 inches
Details
The utterly intense Studio Portrait Over Time from 2016
By intense, I mean a subjectivity and immersion so total that the world gets remade.
Karin Davie, an exciting followup to her recent Chart exhibition, adding drips to the cosmology of viscous mark
A sweet Bill Adams Winkie-filled with innocence, joy, and malevolence
Bill Adams drawing
Mary Jo Vath begins with roses that puddle at the bottom like blood.
Congratulations, Judith Linhares, a great painter, beacon, nspiration to so many in the persistent liberation of what paint makes possible in life.