OPENING RECEPTION: Friday, March 7, 2025 5-8pm

On view through April 27, 2025

Two Person Exhibition - Joan Geary and Rebecca Stahr: Echoes of Earth and Sky

Rebecca's recent encaustic paintings merge an interest in process and the encaustic medium with an organic, almost three dimensional approach to developing a composition. Images that seem to reference nature are the accumulation of thousands of little points of pigmented wax applied in layers. The image seems to simultaneously form and dissolve, and speaks to the mutable and atomically fractured nature of our physical environment. With a technique that recalls the repetitive creation of weaving and textiles, Stahr creates images that can be read both as surface and image.

Geary was born in Chicago, IL, but raised in Glenview, a northern suburb. An early encounter with surrealism – specifically Salvador Dali – and the pop art and op art movements of the 1960s laid the foundation for Geary's lifelong obsession with art. As an adolescent, she would take the bus into the city to spend the day walking around The Art Institute of Chicago alone, seeking out those edgy genres that made such bold use of color, shape, and odd juxtapositions; such a foil to her daily life, and so defiant and wholly different than what she knew. Her solo meanderings through the museum lit something up in her, a yearning for something more – to see and create.

Joan works mainly in oil and cold wax, a medium that allows for the buildup of a rich history and patina through amassing layers of paint and excavation back through those layers. Luminosity and light have become trademarks of her work, which explores color and shape inspired by nature and God. Her work has been featured in numerous venues throughout the Midwest, as well as publications such as The Chicago Tribune, The Doings, and a book titled Cold Wax Medium: Techniques, Concepts, and Conversations by Rebecca Crowell and Jerry McLaughlin.

Image: Rebecca Stahr, Land of the Mystic, encaustic on wood panel, 8" x 8"