{"id":13720,"date":"2021-10-24T11:00:36","date_gmt":"2021-10-24T18:00:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/paintingperceptions.com\/?p=13720"},"modified":"2021-10-24T11:00:36","modified_gmt":"2021-10-24T18:00:36","slug":"janice-nowinski-recent-paintings","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/paintingperceptions.com\/janice-nowinski-recent-paintings\/","title":{"rendered":"Janice Nowinski: Recent Paintings"},"content":{"rendered":"

Review by John Goodrich<\/a>, guest contributor<\/h3>\n

Janice Nowinski: Recent Paintings at Thomas Erben Gallery<\/a> through October 30, 2021<\/h4>\n
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Nude in Front of Mirror<\/em>, 2021. Oil on canvas, 14 x 11 in. image courtesy of  Thomas Erben Gallery <\/p><\/div>\n

Janice Nowinski\u2019s paintings perform a neat bit of deception. They\u2019re usually fairly dark and small in scale, and yet they somehow feel buoyant and expansive. Her forms are awkward, their details abbreviated, but the images feel strangely, eloquently truthful. The artist has explored a range of subjects over the years, including still life, figures in interiors and landscapes, and interpretations of masters\u2019 paintings. But it\u2019s another of the artist\u2019s sources \u2013 nineteenth-century boudoir photos \u2013 that inspired a number of the paintings in the artist\u2019s current show at Thomas Erben. These vintage photos are a particularly felicitous motif for the artist; they\u2019re a starting point for investigations of form and space that turn the pale, anonymous nudes into earthily resonant humans. In Nowinski\u2019s interpretations, their faces remain cyphers \u2013 not much more than scribbles, in some cases \u2013 and their emotional lives as remote as ever, but one feels, viscerally, their personal occupation of space. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Blue Nude<\/i>, 2018. Oil on primed linen panel, 7 x 5 in., image courtesy of  Thomas Erben Gallery <\/p><\/div>\n

Stare at these paintings for a while, and one realizes that a deft sense of color energizes each element, making it crucial to the cohering space. In \u201cBlue Nude\u201d (2018), a narrow tower of light, almost monochromatic notes becomes a figure against a background of warm and cool darks. Nowinski\u2019s brushstrokes are invariably colorful, even when near-black or barely off-white, and in this tiny, seven-inch-tall painting they conjure a surprisingly complete impression of not just the scene\u2019s illumination, but even the figure\u2019s resistance to gravity. Building one upon the other, the colors of her form rise sturdily to culminate in the brightest note, the horizontal of a lifted arm. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Two Nudes<\/em>, 2020. Oil on linen, 12 x 16 in., image courtesy of  Thomas Erben Gallery <\/p><\/div>\n

One contemporary approach to the figure is to render it as a series of symbols: signs for eyes, mouth, arm. This is arguably a more sophisticated, contemporary approach, in which artists examine their own process as much as they observe their subject matter. Nowinski appears to proceed more innocently, and to look more deeply at colors and forms, relying on these purely visual elements to coalesce in a vitalized version of her motif. \u201cTwo Nudes\u201d (2020) is a fine example; glints of color set off a shifting nest of space between two women. Pick any points \u2013 the lightened hip of the nearer figure, say, against the more muted hues of the second nude\u2019s shoulders (themselves minutely different) \u2013 and one senses a continuous activation of space that nudges forms into rhythmic life. <\/span><\/p>\n

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Nude Holding a Wine Glass<\/i>, 2020. Oil on canvas, 14 x 11 in., image courtesy of  Thomas Erben Gallery <\/p><\/div>\n

Viewers will almost always be aware of their vantage point in a Nowinski painting \u2013 what elements they look down at, which rise above the point of view \u2013 so that the spaces unfold before the eye. The effect is particularly strong in \u201cNude Holding a Wine Glass\u201d (2020), which leads the viewer\u2019s eye, step by downward step, from the orb of the face, to the more neutral plane of the upper chest, then the barely cooler belly, and finally to intimations of a leg at the very bottom edge of the painting.  <\/span>(Or is it fabric, not a leg? The placement of forms so secure is that they persuade, even when unidentifiable.) The ruddy shadows of the upper arm, set against lighter skintones \u2013 along with the pressures of a dozen other hues \u2013 are enough to make gesture, figure and environment palpably alive. It\u2019s a sensation one feels again and again in this exhibition of small, rawly fashioned images \u2013 the ring of truth, sounding loud and clear. <\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Review by John Goodrich, guest contributor Janice Nowinski: Recent Paintings at Thomas Erben Gallery through October 30, 2021 Janice Nowinski\u2019s paintings perform a neat bit of deception. They\u2019re usually fairly…<\/p>\n

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