Laura Rathe Fine Art presents "Float," a solo exhibition of new artwork by highly sought-after artist, Janna Watson.
Canadian painter Watson uses abstraction as both an escape from and a return to the real. As the world we know dematerializes into paint strokes, so too does her paint take the stage as its very own character in a multi-act drama of composition. Bundles of color, made up of discrete yet inseparable instances of pigment - what Watson refers to as “moments” - are teeming and poised as though caught mid-multiplication.
Sweeps of paint redirect sharply and fold over themselves; thin, rigid ink lines cut into the pictorial field as rudimentary elements in an increasingly complex system of painterly language. All the components play out on a surface of slow, chromatic gradation. Like many of Watson’s players, these backdrops tenderly gesture toward the familiar, stopping just short of representation.
The result is a conceptual project (and distinct, stylistic signature) that speaks to a contemporary milieu in which abstract painting is not the retreat of meaning into an unrecognizable realm but rather the emergence of the medium as a “figure” in its self-inscribed world of feeling and being. Watson does more than reveal paint’s potential to emote - she gives it a space to reveal itself in its own time.
Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on display until June 13.
Laura Rathe Fine Art presents "Float," a solo exhibition of new artwork by highly sought-after artist, Janna Watson.
Canadian painter Watson uses abstraction as both an escape from and a return to the real. As the world we know dematerializes into paint strokes, so too does her paint take the stage as its very own character in a multi-act drama of composition. Bundles of color, made up of discrete yet inseparable instances of pigment - what Watson refers to as “moments” - are teeming and poised as though caught mid-multiplication.
Sweeps of paint redirect sharply and fold over themselves; thin, rigid ink lines cut into the pictorial field as rudimentary elements in an increasingly complex system of painterly language. All the components play out on a surface of slow, chromatic gradation. Like many of Watson’s players, these backdrops tenderly gesture toward the familiar, stopping just short of representation.
The result is a conceptual project (and distinct, stylistic signature) that speaks to a contemporary milieu in which abstract painting is not the retreat of meaning into an unrecognizable realm but rather the emergence of the medium as a “figure” in its self-inscribed world of feeling and being. Watson does more than reveal paint’s potential to emote - she gives it a space to reveal itself in its own time.
Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on display until June 13.
Laura Rathe Fine Art presents "Float," a solo exhibition of new artwork by highly sought-after artist, Janna Watson.
Canadian painter Watson uses abstraction as both an escape from and a return to the real. As the world we know dematerializes into paint strokes, so too does her paint take the stage as its very own character in a multi-act drama of composition. Bundles of color, made up of discrete yet inseparable instances of pigment - what Watson refers to as “moments” - are teeming and poised as though caught mid-multiplication.
Sweeps of paint redirect sharply and fold over themselves; thin, rigid ink lines cut into the pictorial field as rudimentary elements in an increasingly complex system of painterly language. All the components play out on a surface of slow, chromatic gradation. Like many of Watson’s players, these backdrops tenderly gesture toward the familiar, stopping just short of representation.
The result is a conceptual project (and distinct, stylistic signature) that speaks to a contemporary milieu in which abstract painting is not the retreat of meaning into an unrecognizable realm but rather the emergence of the medium as a “figure” in its self-inscribed world of feeling and being. Watson does more than reveal paint’s potential to emote - she gives it a space to reveal itself in its own time.
Following the opening reception, the exhibit will be on display until June 13.