Great Escapes: Jayne Holsinger, William Steiger, Michael Volonakis

Jayne Holsinger's current theme is “Woman Drivers”. The works are painted from photographs the artist takes out of the car window or from passenger seat of a car. The subjects are crisp, detached landscapes and portraits. The paintings have the serial quality of films and are hung in a horizontal line suggesting storyboards or time lapse. They convey moments of transition, mobility and passage. The artist is a 1999 recipient of the Pollock/Krasner Grant. She lives in Manhattan and works in Brooklyn.

 

William Steiger paintings appear as in a dreamlike vision: clear and crystalline with intense detail. Yet the works are devoid of fundamental information that would locate them in space or time. The actual sites or sources from which the artist draws his inspiration are secondary to the emotional responses that they evoke. He strives to create new places that contain or embody specific emotions. The artist has a master’s degree in painting from Yale. Steiger lives and paints in Manhattan.


Michael Volonakis makes intimate black and white photographs of landscapes. He prints two negatives next to or above one another on the same sheet of paper. By reducing the scale of the photographs to miniature proportions the artist forces the viewer to get really close to view the work. We become intimate with the tiny landscapes. Much like the pretend world of a dollhouse, the photographs are otherworldly and transporting. Volonakis teaches at Pratt Institute and works in his studio in Brooklyn.