Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to open the 2018 exhibition season with a group show featuring new work by Susan English, Catherine Latson and Janna Watson.
Boundless curiosity, close observation, and patience are manifest in the gorgeous work of Catherine Latson. The Specimen Series is inspired by sea anemones and the motion of a water-bound world, exploring forms that blur the lines between animal and plant, realism and fantasy, sculpture and specimen. Radial symmetry and tentacle structures are common denominators in the mysterious variety of forms in Latson’s newest work. Each wall sculpture describes a hybridized and imagined organism in arrested motion.
Latson’s complex artworks belie her simple materials. The artist hand-dyes embroidery floss in variations of a single dominant color and wraps the thread tightly and skillfully around her armature. The construction of each work entails countless hours of whipping and knotting, resulting in dense, rich color and graceful, compelling compositions.
Catherine Latson earned a BA in Biology from Macalester College, St Paul, MN. Her work has been exhibited throughout the United States, including at The Hudson River Museum, Yonkers, NY, and in the Macy’s Flowers Shows in Philadelphia, PA and New York, NY and has been featured in the American Craft Magazine and The New York Times. The artist works in Yonkers, NY.
Susan English is inspired by light — the way it refracts on the wind-ruffled surface of the Hudson River, or is absorbed by the shadow of a building, or slices through venetian blinds. By watching light in relation to objects and environments, the artist distills her palette of color for her reductive abstract paintings. In the artist’s words: “Landscapes condense into shapes of color for me: when I look at a mountain across the river I see its blue shadow as a separate solid, a discrete entity. I try to precisely determine what that color is, its density, its timbre in order to evoke this expression of light and mass in my paintings”.
English makes her evocative surfaces of nuanced colors by pouring layers of tinted polymer on wood panel. The poured polymer mimics nature: a layer of paint hardens like ice or mud; the material’s thickness and viscosity informs the finished appearance. Paint coagulates and gathers in the cracks and fissures of the artist’s drawing under the glossy surface, a result of the delicate and flexible relationship between control and accident. The painted surfaces range from matte to glossy, alternatively absorbing or reflecting light in response to the available illumination and the position of the viewer. Ultimately, the panels are choreographed into horizontal or vertical sequences to create a narrative of color, space, and light.
Susan English's work has been the subject of solo exhibitions throughout the United Sates. English received a fellowship at the Saltonstall Foundation for the Arts, Ithaca, NY and was artist in residency at Habitat for Artists, Garrison, NY. Her work has been reviewed in The New York Times, Chronogram, Abstract Art Online and the Philadelphia Inquirer, to name a few. English earned an MFA from Hunter College, New York, NY and BA from Hamilton College, Clinton, NY. She lives and works in Cold Spring, NY.
Janna Watson is a young artist who has quickly made an impression on the contemporary art scene. Her abstract compositions and energetic brushstrokes possess an elegant and powerful vitality. A masterful colorist, Watson’s paintings are a carefully balanced orchestra of color. She creates energetic tension between deliberate and confident marks and spontaneous drips and gestures that are artifacts of her intuitive process. Watson’s compositions are an intriguing assertion of bold gesture set against atmospheric expression. Watson’s rich palette is further amplified by the addition of a high-gloss resin finish that deepens the illusionistic space and reflects light.
The artist is widely exhibited internationally. Watson’s paintings can be found in several significant collections, including in the Toronto collections of TD Bank Financial Group, CIBC, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel and the HBC Global Art Collection in New York. In 2017, she was selected to create a mural-size painting for the feature space in AURA, North America’s largest condominium building. Watson earned a BFA in Drawing and Painting from Ontario College of Art and Design, Toronto, ON. The artist lives and works in Toronto, Canada.
