Mary Weatherford

Brooklyn
2008
Flash on linen
78 x 100 inches
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"Like a true Symbolist her gaze wanders out across an ocean horizon, confronts a looming rock or cave, or plunges deep into a thicket of vines and weeds. Light and shadow confound and dazzle, sometimes sending off overlapping shards reminiscent of Feininger. Other historical stylistic models include Burchfield, Munch, and Friedrich. The Pop element comes from a “knowingness” with regards to style and how it can be essentialized into a compact shorthand that reflects the constructed nature of the paint surface as much or even more than the represented source, which is often itself a mediated source. Her paint surfaces are often astonishingly beautiful. Painted in Flashe vinyl paint over a heavy ground sanded smooth, they are both fluid and matte, with the chromatic richness of oil and the delicate, mineral grain of gouache."

- Stephen Westfall