ArtsWrite

05/16/2017

Please note that Kindred Spirits will be traveling to The Painting Center in Chelsea in late November... the show will run through December 23rd. Visit our page at
Kindred Spirits: Exploring Abstract Expressionism Today

02/08/2017

Thanks all for looking and I'll be back on board soon! Many irons in the fire. Enjoy your day!

07/10/2016

Read here an article by ArtsWrite owner Katherine Aimone about the exciting new Center for Maine Contemporary Art! Congrats to the staff of the new CMCA.

03/20/2016

ArtsWrite has also created a catalogue for the exhibition Kindred Spirits: Exploring Abstract Expressionism Today which will open at the Greenville Center for the Creative Arts on April 1! Twenty-eight page catalogue is available through ArtsWrite (please message us).

03/20/2016

Currently working on an article for Art New England on the new Center for Maine Contemporary Art, which has relocated to Rockland, Maine from Rockport and opens at the end of June! The Executive Director, Suzette McAvoy, has seen this project through since her short tenure with the Center beginning in 2010. It is an amazing story of persistence on her part as well as the board and leadership of the Center. The building was designed by internationally acclaimed architect Toshiko Mori and will be a showplace for the contemporary arts of Maine, and, as Alex Katz says, "a game changer." The article will appear in the July/August issue of the magazine.

03/14/2016

The definition of nonobjective art:
"Music is an abstract medium, and I thought painting should also just be what it’s about and not about other things—not about stories or symbolism. I don’t think of my painting as abstract because I don’t abstract from anything. It’s involved with real visual aspects of what you are looking at- whether wood, paint, or metal- how it’s put together, how it looks on the wall and works with the light. I use real light, so there’s not an illusion of light. It’s a real experience. The lines are real. You see real shadow. The wall is involved with the painting."- Robert Ryman

[Untitled, 1959, Oil paint on unstretched raw cotton canvas, 7 x 7 1/4 in. Private Collection, Switzerland. Photo by: Ellen Page WilsonCourtesy, The Pace Gallery, NY]

"Music is an abstract medium, and I thought painting should also just be what it’s about and not about other things—not about stories or symbolism. I don’t think of my painting as abstract because I don’t abstract from anything. It’s involved with real visual aspects of what you are looking at- whether wood, paint, or metal- how it’s put together, how it looks on the wall and works with the light. I use real light, so there’s not an illusion of light. It’s a real experience. The lines are real. You see real shadow. The wall is involved with the painting."- Robert Ryman

[Untitled, 1959, Oil paint on unstretched raw cotton canvas, 7 x 7 1/4 in. Private Collection, Switzerland. Photo by: Ellen Page WilsonCourtesy, The Pace Gallery, NY]

02/18/2016

Coming April 1! Kindred Spirits: Exploring Abstract Expressionism Today to Greenville Creative Center for the Arts. Organized by Katherine Aimone.
(Galen Cheney, Miss New York, 48 x 64 in.)
“I feel like the grit and vision and courage of the Abstract Expressionists imprinted itself on my artistic DNA. DeKooning, Mitchell, Guston, Krasner, Kline—these are my painting heroes. They fearlessly mined their unconscious and lay it all bare on the canvas, or rather they faced their fear and blew it open with powerful and original beauty. This is what I strive for every time I work on a painting.” —Galen Cheney
Born in Los Angeles, Galen Cheney now lives and works in rural Vermont. She received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, and her M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute, College of Art. Her awards include fellowships from The Millay Colony, The Vermont Studio Center, and Da Wang Culture Highland, as well as a publication award from Open Studios Press, an exhibition award from Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, and a nomination for a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in painting. Her work has been collected and shown throughout the U.S. and abroad, with her most recent exhibitions being at The Painting Center in New York City, The Kent Museum in Calais, Vermont, and Da Wang Culture Highland in Shenzhen, China.
More of her work can be found at www.galencheney.com.

Coming April 1! Kindred Spirits: Exploring Abstract Expressionism Today. Join us for this exciting opening on our first anniversary!
(Galen Cheney, Miss New York, 48 x 64 in.)
“I feel like the grit and vision and courage of the Abstract Expressionists imprinted itself on my artistic DNA. DeKooning, Mitchell, Guston, Krasner, Kline—these are my painting heroes. They fearlessly mined their unconscious and lay it all bare on the canvas, or rather they faced their fear and blew it open with powerful and original beauty. This is what I strive for every time I work on a painting.” —Galen Cheney
Born in Los Angeles, Galen Cheney now lives and works in rural Vermont. She received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College, and her M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute, College of Art. Her awards include fellowships from The Millay Colony, The Vermont Studio Center, and Da Wang Culture Highland, as well as a publication award from Open Studios Press, an exhibition award from Saint-Gaudens National Historic Site, and a nomination for a Joan Mitchell Foundation Grant in painting. Her work has been collected and shown throughout the U.S. and abroad, with her most recent exhibitions being at The Painting Center in New York City, The Kent Museum in Calais, Vermont, and Da Wang Culture Highland in Shenzhen, China.
More of her work can be found at www.galencheney.com.

01/09/2016

Some of the paintings that will be shown in Kindred Spirits that opens April 1 in Greenville at the new (one year anniversary!) Greenville Center for the Creative Arts. Organized by Katherine Aimone. Steven Aimone is designing the catalogue that will be available after April 1. If you have an interest, we'll put you on a list!

01/09/2016

Working on a show and catalogue for the new Greenville Center for the Creative Arts in South Carolina. Artists include Jay Zerbe, Margaret Glew, Galen Cheney, Matthew Dibble, Steven Aimone, and myself. The show is called Kindred Spirits, linking our work to the phenomenal change that happened in New York during the 50s/60s when the Abstract Expressionists found their voice, living their very Bohemian lifestyles. After being in Italy for three months, I realize clearly the impact that America had on the world of art in this relatively short period of time. Although there were predecessors of abstraction such as Picasso... and of course the non-objectivity of Kandinsky... Americans and the critics in America... brought the wide open nature of this country onto the walls and in Pollock's case... the floors... moving from the body and the intuitive psyche. Without those roots, I doubt I'd be doing the work I do today. Italy is still of course very tied to it's history in the Renaissance. And yet a few artists here in America, with the availability of large spaces, created another revolution of sorts. There seems to be nothing as lasting in painting as the AbX movement to me, since the Renaissance. Interesting to think about.

11/04/2015

UnderMySkin: New Works By Jennifer Perez Crisanti
Through December 1, 2015; Cortona, Italy
“My work is about my connection to the world—what is under my skin...”
Jennifer Perez Cristanti’s newest paintings combined with a site-specific installation illustrate the artist’s innate need to constantly take risks and evolve. The title of the exhibition, UnderMySkin, is most keenly underscored by the artist’s installation in her gallery/studio in Cortona. She has created a womb-like setting filled with cotton batting, both on a wall and hanging from exposed nails in the medieval building that serves as her studio.

In a quest to both understand and create a safe haven for shedding fears and outgrown notions, she invites the viewer in to experience and think about what this concept means…as in…to peel away layers and expose raw material, allowing the possibility of stretching and expanding beyond the usual limits.

In this process of shedding the old, there is a cohabitation of both pain and renewal, since one process cannot happen without the other. Through this “tearing,” as she calls it, we reveal what lies beneath, and what longs to be shown but is hidden. This installation imparts the notion of softness and fragility due to Cristani’s use of remnants of torn cotton—but in contrast, they are installed in a room with centuries-old walls that have cracked and peeled, revealing bits of disclosed “skin” beneath the original plaster.

Her paintings extend this process because each has layers of paint that have been covered over and changed as she finds her way toward resolution. These layers or “skins” in each painting have a hidden history, since certain areas are obliterated while others are revealed as she works.

Organic in sensibility, the paintings encompass the geometric and linear, reflecting the architectural surroundings as well as the gentle, flowing valley and hills of Etruria. Their highly tactile nature serves as a reinforcement of her love of paint and its physicality.

Crisanti works in her studio every day. “I paint each day no matter what is going on,” she notes. “It is a need as well as a duty for me.” Her quest to understand the world, herself, and her work is apparent in her obsessive nature to mature as an artist. “Even when I’m not working and creating, I am thinking about it and observing,” she says.

A natural colorist and abstractionist, she senses and feels her way through making the work, rather than preconceiving specific shapes and colors. In that way, she is most related in spirit to the Abstract Expressionists, and she embraces the notion of automatism, or working from the subconscious without thinking, as did this historical group of painters. In contrast, she also steps back to examine her work, take it in, and analyze it on a more conscious level.

Her painting is a quest for the universal, but it is born from an innate visual language that extends from her body and her unique experience. Through viewing and experiencing Crisanti’s work, we are freed up to feel that there is nothing to hide, and that showing our own vulnerabilities and our true selves is a courageous and life-changing act that extends to others, and in turn, to the world.

—Katherine Duncan Aimone, www.artswrite.com