Friday in the City: Part 1 - Gina Werfel at Prince Street
Gallery
Once a month, I try to get into the city to look at what’s
going on in Chelsea. First Street is
there and I go for monthly meetings. We
saw a ton of art and it was great! Some
of it I liked, some I didn’t, and all of it I had opinions about. There were three shows that have really
stayed with me, though.
Gina Werfel at Prince Street Gallery was one of the most unexpected and fantastic
shows I’ve seen in a while. The abstract
expressionist California painter paints with exciting west coast color. I could almost see in my mind’s eye, the
artist as she drenched the canvas with sunlight yellows, tangerines, too blue
to be true sky blues, gold, and fuchsia all the while dancing with flushed
pinks and bright, clean neutrals. I felt immediate uplifting and positive
energy on a cool, cloudy, and blustery, not to mention gray, April morning after
a long winter in NYC. As if the color
weren’t exciting enough, the paint handling and texture of it all was rich,
juicy, and bold. Her mark making felt
honest and sensitive, as if from delicate and thorough observation, oozing with
confident assertion. The work gave the impression that the paint
was applied with equal measure academic discipline as pure glee! This is painting for the wonderful sake of
painting! As a bonus Werfel was there
sitting her show, which is common for co-ops (I sat my own show) and we had a
really nice conversation! She paints oil on canvas, as well as paper in
acrylic and showed us a small book of her “sketches” which were gorgeous little
gems of color and gesture. As a
landscape painter from CT, she transplanted herself from the head of the Art
Department at UCONN to UC Davis and with that drastic change in environment; she
showed us how her work had transformed through the change. I loved talking with her and found her
delightful personality and her exciting work to be fascinating, energizing, and
refreshing!
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