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Please contact the Gallery by phone at 973.746.8737 or email gallery@73seegallery.com with your inquiries. Curated by Mary Z. 73 See Gallery, 73 C Pine Street, Montclair, NJ 07042 © 73 See Gallery 2016
CATALOG #12
met Gail Winbury one spring day when she came to visit me at the gallery after I had reviewed several of her large paintings online and was immediately drawn to her work and hoped to soon see it in person. She carried her ipad with her that had newly shot professional photographs of her latest work and a few portfolios of her works on paper. Initially we reviewed the photos of the paintings together, and talked about the various themes, her process, life events that informed the work, technique and her practice and training. While the photos were excellent in themselves, as evidenced in this catalog, my desire to see these large canvases up close and personal only grew stronger. No amount of zooming in on details can replicate the wonder of seeing and contemplating these paintings in person. So we settled that we would make a date once she returned from her residency in Israel to arrange for a visit to her studio. And then the most marvelous sharing happened. Gail presented a portfolio of her work on paper saying that I might be interested and that she really never shared them before. These small pieces are filled with tinier, spontaneous aspects of her larger works. They are like reading the journals of a great writer as they inform a way of looking at the world visually unique to the artist, at times playful, experimental, concise and utterly delightful. I hoped that she would be willing to find a way to include a body of these works in this exhibit and now that is a reality.
Gail humbly suggests that she is a self-confessed “late bloomer” however art has always been a vital part of her life. Her professional career as a clinical psychologist prior to giving her full attention to painting, informs and continues to influence her work. From the time that she was able to devote her full attention to her painting and art studies she has produced an extensive and highly developed body of work, exhibited widely and has received awards and honors duly deserved. Gail studied under the tutelage of the prominent Chinese American artist Dorothy Yung for 15 years. While Winbury’s work is often characterized as abstract expressionism, her work is beyond that as it carries a narrative of feelings and emotions exploring her relationship to feminine experience and aging/death. The scale of the paintings, the majority here being 48” x 38” is in and of itself powerful but that is just one aspect. Gail’s paintings have a hidden and overt architecture. In her own words, “a tension between softness and delicacy and power and strength… in my work I usually play with areas which are bare, uncovered, translucent and areas that are built up, what is there and not there. What is seen and what is hidden.” Each painting has multiple focal points, a story within a story within a story. Science is confirming that we carry in our genes the language of symbolic inheritance or collective consciousness and Gail’s paintings draw upon this and creates surfaces
that invite contemplative engagement rather than a passing impression. This deftness is not lost in her smaller works either. There the economy of what is presented overtly and in layers still is imbued with this meditative quality. Gail has a keen intellect, an extensive grasp of art history, rich life experience and yet embodies a warm, humble and compassionate demeanor. I have been enriched by her work, her personhood and now friendship and I am grateful to be able to share and present her work with you. – Mary Z, curator 2016
Please contact the Gallery: gallery@73seegallery.com with your inquiries. Curated by Mary Z.
www.73seegallery.com
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ome time ago, Gail Winbury, a successful psychologist with a thriving practice who has always been enthralled by painting, decided that she wanted to become an artist after all—and not simply a Sunday painter. She began to study the discipline—a demanding one—in 1998, taking classes at Montclair Museum School, Provincetown Art Museum School, the School of Visual Arts in New York, and elsewhere, both in this country and internationally, citing Dorothy Yung, an Asian-American painter, as her longtime mentor. She also studied with Joan Snyder, sharing with that much admired artist a sensibility that tilts toward the exuberantly painterly, toward a joie de vivre, a joie de peindre. Second lives, however, are not uncommon these days and, in fact, often applauded—so Winbury, more and more enamored, decided to go for it. Since then, she has produced a richly diverse, increasingly assured body of work. Savage Heat (2013), a seminal painting that came to her in a dream, she said, changed the direction of her thinking. It is saturated in color—she is a gifted, fearless colorist—but the headiest shade in it is a gorgeous, sultry pink reminiscent of de Kooning’s, associated with his many female nudes and their slashed, abraded, yet enticing flesh. It is part of an ongoing argument that she has had with the Dutch master, trying to wrest back that sweet, voluptuous hue from him and from a male gaze that can too often be viewed as misogynist. And she has succeeded by translating it into a very different, more empathetic, and celebratory context, making that pink her own in paintings such as Savage Heat, Dandelion Waltz (2013-2014) and This is Our Place (2014-2015).
About three years ago, she decided to pare down her color scheme, although that might be an overstatement.* Winbury can’t resist flooding her paintings with color, even if only a few shades are immediately visible, the rest lurking under layers, tucked into odd, overlooked corners, bubbling away, to triumphantly erupt onto the surface. Even when she truly only applies a few hues, somehow those paintings, too, seem more colorful than might be expected. Change is integral to her process; she needs to push further, to try out other resolutions, to see what might happen, surprising herself. This particular change, however, was precipitated by the death of her parents, which deeply affected her, her thoughts becoming more sober, reflecting on age and mortality as something no longer abstract, far in the future. In the most recent works, she has returned to the figure in works such as The Conversation (2016) in which two figural forms are intertwined, bounded further together by a strong contour line, as if deeply engrossed in an exclusive dialogue with each other, the colors once again light, more optimistic. As with her color, it might be argued that reference to the body had never really disappeared from her lexicon. It was just obscured, fragmented, encrypted, waiting to be reinstated, as part of a revolving, selected vocabulary that shifts emphasis. And she is also returning to color in a triumphant blaze of eye-catching hues, including the reds, oranges, and pinks that she loves in paintings such as Slip Sliding Away (2016), until the next turn of the wheel. But each of the paintings always holds her essential premises, founded on uncertainty and intangible longings, on the complexity of the human condition. How she might continue to find eloquent means to express this is her quest, one that is always in progress. – excerpted from an 2016 article by Lilly Wei, a New York-based art critic, independent curator and journalist whose focus is global contemporary art.
* see We are the Cave Dwellers or Cloud House (gw)
photo by Robert Herman
s an abstract artist, I synthesize active, gestural painting with a minimal and geometric approach. I push the boundaries of painting while still connecting to its history, and work to change a 2-dimensional object (the canvas) into something more sculptural. Towards that end, I build thick textured surfaces, embed silk thread, and velum, and, cut and sew the canvas to disrupt the picture plane. I love oil paint, the physical process of painting, and use large bowls of oil pigment, which dry slowly. I draw with tools into the paint to create linear and sculptural elements. With old canvases, I may scrape, sand and wash away paint with turpentine, leaving only essential forms and subtle bursts of color. A new painting emerges from the remnants of the old, as I worked on a series about the passage of time, and mortality. Ambivalence about the wish to be known, and the wish to be disguised and hidden is integral to my work. This can be seen in layers of paint that both reveal and obscure what is beneath, and on a closer look, in the small drawings that hide in the canvas. I use techniques, which augment the underlying meaning of my art.
Driven by restlessness and curiosity, I work on several series simultaneously. Another series is about the female body, passion and power. My curiosity also results in frequent travel. These travel paintings are spontaneous and direct expressions of place, allowing culture, history, and geography of the country to permeate. I begin with abstracted landscapes, which I deconstruct into small oils on paper. This exhibit includes smaller works on paper. Until recently these were kept unseen, private in journals and flat files. Revealing these private moments adds a vulnerability and intimacy to the exhibit bringing the viewer closer to my process and compliments the strong larger works. My art is psychological in nature and challenges the primacy of technology. I believe that one of my gifts as an artist is to understand uncertainty, chaos, and conflict, and make them manifest in the language of paint. My art thus becomes a psychological reflection of our essential human condition and the triumphs and struggles of maintaining our humanity. – Gail Winbury, 2016
Dandelion Waltz oil on canvas, 2014 48” x 38” 3800.
A Gentle Squeeze oil on canvas, 2014 46” x 36” 3600.
Rhapsody in Red oil on canvas, 2014 48” x 38” 3800.
This Is Our Place oil, charcoal on canvas, 2014 48” x 38” 3800.
Slip Sliding Away oil, charcoal, pastel on canvas, 2016 48” x 38” 4000.
Cosmos oil on canvas, 2015 48” x 38” 3800.
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The Space Between oil on canvas, 2015 48” x 38” 3800.
A Point of View oil on canvas, 2016 38” x 38” 3400.
Cloud House oil, pastel on canvas, 2015 48” x 38” 3800.
Be Bopping Along oil, pastel on canvas, 2016 35” x 30” unframed 2225.
Conversation(s) oil, charcoal, pastel on canvas, 2015 38” x 48” 3800.
The Button Box oil, silk thread, conte crayon on canvas, 2016 48” x 38” 3800.
Forget Me Not oil, graphite on canvas, 2015 24” x 24” 1200.
Tobi’s Window oil, pastel on canvas, 2014 12” x 12” 600.
Out the Window oil on panel, 2014 12” x12” 600.
Poet’s Pot oil, charcoal on canvas, 2015 12” x 12” 495.
Chicken oil on canvas, 2015 12” x 12” 495.
We Are the Cave Dwellers oil, acrylic, conte crayon on canvas, 2014 12” x 12” 495.
Hide and Seek oil, pastel on canvas, 2015 12” x 12” 495.
The Wee Ones oil on canvas, 2015 6” x 6” @ 300.
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Israel : My Arad oil, graphite on loose canvas, 2015 14” x 13.5” 425.
Mexico: Nighttime in the Cantina oil on loose canvas, 2015 13.5” x 19” 650.
Italy: Castillo oil on loose canvas, 2015 18.75” x 17.25” 450.
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Israel: My Arad (the Negev) guache, graphite on paper, 2015 18” x 24” 500.
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2
3
Mexico : 1. El Paseo un Noches
2 & 3: Dias in Jardin I & II
oil, graphite on paper, 2016 approx. 6.5” x 9” 250.
Italy: Botranto (Homage to Botera) ink, magazine on paper, 2015 mounted on 11” x 14” 450.
Italy: Otranto, The Village
Italy: The Ionian Sea
graphite, wood, magazine, watercolor on paper,
graphite, papers, magazine on paper, 2015
mounted on 11” x 14”
mounted on 11” x 14”
450.
450.
Gail Winbury is a contemporary abstract artist with solo and juried exhibits in galleries and museums through out the United States and Europe. She is slated for a two-person exhibit in Germany, 2017. She was recently awarded and returned from an artist residency in Israel, June 2016. She received a visual-arts fellowship for Italy in 2015, and in 2014 was a painting resident at the School of Visual Arts, Manhattan. Concurrent with Winbury’s exhibit at the 73 SEE Gallery in Montclair, NJ, she has a large works exhibit at the Atrium Gallery, Morristown, NJ. While oil painting is her primary medium, of late she is exhibiting drawings and works on paper. She has won awards such as the Curator’s Choice Award 2 years in a row, and the Curtis Hilliard Memorial Award. In 2015 she was one of 7 artists invited for an exhibit representing the current state of abstraction. Her art is published in a book on Bach’s Cello solos, in several art catalogs, including one in Italy with an essay about her work. She currently is working on a catalog of her works. The artist curates exhibitions, gives talks on abstract art, visual language, and mentors other artists. This prolific, “mid-career artist” makes paintings that are known to be “lyrical, and at times mysterious”, as if answering deep metaphysical questions. Other times, Winbury’s work is sensuous, exuberant and direct. She has private collectors in the United States, and Italy.
Photo credits for painting images are shared between Peter Jacobs and Gail Winbury and are used with permission. Please contact the Gallery by phone at 973.746.8737 or email gallery@73seegallery.com with your inquiries. Curated by Mary Z. 73 See Gallery, 73 C Pine Street, Montclair, NJ 07042 © 73 See Gallery 2016
CATALOG #12