MTC ART GALLERY

The MTC community art program presents:

Paintings by
Judy Gittelsohn

April 9, 2012 – June 29, 2012, ABAG Offices

Judy Gittelsohn has been painting in the Bay Area for over 30 years. She exhibits widely and her work is collected around the world in both private and corporate collections. Anne Loucks Gallery, Glencoe, Illinois, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art Artists’ Gallery and Art Dimensions, Los Angeles, represent her artwork. She has received several grants to teach art to developmentally disabled individuals, people recovering from illness or injury and at-risk youth – helping to mount shows, produce murals and create publications of their artwork. In 2007, Judy opened Art for Well Beings – www.artforwellbeings.org – an art center in Palo Alto, to serve all people interested in the transformative power of art.

Artist’s Statement

A typical day of mine has moments of painting in my studio encircled by my work in the community. I teach art in the juvenile hall and at low-income housing in Palo Alto, and I have a studio — Art for Well Beings — where I teach people with developmental disabilities. I also work for Golden Acrylics, the top of the line artist paint, and present to painters in our area how to use all the many products Golden offers.

I present art exercises to a range of people and then I nestle in and transmit all the influences to my own art practice.

On display are 17 paintings that are from the last 10 or so years, and what a 10 or so years they were. But that’s another story for another time.

Paint is a marvelous material for me. My way of applying paint is to do so in many layers. I sort of scrub the paint on in many applications. The result of this build-up method is that the paint responds to light. Paintings appear differently at different times of day. In one light a painting can seem yellow or gold and at another time of day, it will look as if it is pale white. I love that paintings change depending on the light.

In my work, I am focusing on shapes being simultaneously solid and porous, planes tipping forward and back, and angles intersecting curves.

“Wheels Still in Spin” is an ode to our times. This painting began with a query about the changing climate of our work force. The thought is that we are moving from a lifetime employment to project-based work. You can still see the “t” from the word project arising in the upper right corner. During the course of creating this painting, I was listening to Bob Dylan’s “Times They Are A-Changin,’” and thinking of how we are evolving. Mid-painting, Steve Jobs passed away and I learned that Dylan was Jobs’ favorite musician. This synchronicity is one of the fantastic byproducts of my career.

There are stories behind each painting. My paintings tend to take time to arrive. They age, mature, change and develop at their own pace, and are finished when and only when they are ready. In the painting “Pinball,” my cat is shown with strong eye contact and a body contorted as only a cat can do. I interviewed Pinball on my TV show, Art for Well Beings, and you can watch her on episode13:
http://blip.tv/artforwellbeings/cats-and-caves-5702032

I invite and welcome your responses.
—Judy Gittelsohn

More information: www.judyg.com