Nancy Fritz: BEING… WITH

Nancy Fritz: BEING… WITH

Opening Reception: Friday, July 5, 2024, 5-8pm

I have always been a figurative painter. I am unable to paint anything else. For a while I was fascinated with painting faces of people I cared about—trying to capture each unique essence on the canvas. This show takes a different turn—faces are generic; figures are ambiguous and stylized. What links these paintings is the connection between the figures—a person reaching towards another person, figures moving in concert… each part of an ecosystem larger than themselves.

As I get older, this is what seems to matter. Coming of age during 2nd wave feminism, I (of course) tried to do it all. I became a physician and then a parent and finally a painter. And it turns out that none of these things (even painting) can really be done outside of community. I began to understand that feminism (perforce) implies connection. Now part of a feminist collective of artists, I am ever more aware of the energy acquired via connection and collaboration — with other people, with the environment, with artists who’ve come before me.  I am less interested these days in using imagery to express unique identities — and more interested in how a figure-shaped splotch of color communicates something that we all understand — a sort of semiotic language available to us just because we are human. The figures in these paintings sit/dance together — often uncomfortably. I nestle these human-ish shapes within a background of bird, tree, and plant shapes — some of which seem on fire, some are perhaps dying. There is a darkness to these paintings; but the figures in them nevertheless are connected to each other — an essential aspect of “being”. They are not without hope.

So... in spite of my (usually) very cognitive take on life, and an ironic view of most things human, there is nothing ironic, or even very conceptual, about these pieces. I have an old-fashioned love of craft, of making a tangible object with my own hands, of layering pigmented muds to create an illusion of light and solidity and narrative suggestion. There is a kind of (perversely retro?) romanticism to these paintings that nevertheless appeals to the feminist in me — that nods to the complicated ecosystems we live in.

I hope they perhaps will speak to you as well.  

Artists who have particularly influenced me: Jorge Castillo, Charlette Salomon, Peter Doig, Nicole Eisenmen, Alice Valenstein, Andrew Cranston

 
Opening Reception, Friday, July 5, 5:00-8:00pm

Exhibition dates: July 5 - 26, 2024

Gallery hours: Thurs – Fri 2-6pm, Sat – Sun 12-4 pm

This program is partially supported by a grant from the Illinois Arts Council Agency.