This exhibit considers the relationship
between the human and the natural worlds. It explores the many ways artists are thinking about, and responding to, nature, from close observation to narrative and metaphor, from work that looks at the threats of climate change and mass extinction to art that is personal and intimate. Our goal is to showcase a wide range of ideas, media, and emotions, serving to evoke the complex and layered connections between us and our world.
Sachiko Akiyama
Jan Martijn Burger
Sarah Myers Brendt
Stacy Cushner
Melissa Dold
Rick Fox
Michelle Lougee
Patte Loper
Kayla Mohammadi
Naoe Suziki
Sophy Tuttle
Rosemary Taylor
Statement
Working on paper, panel, and canvas, I degrade pink (tender associations: “gentle” “submissive” “ladylike”) with aggressive brushstrokes and slick, dripping paint, scraping entire paintings down and reworking them into abstracted stories, palimpsets of fishnet stockings, beads, and pantyhose amid obfuscated genitals, eyes, toothy smiles and juicy lips; heavy-handed marks of oil, acrylic, spray paint, glitter; scrawled text offering suggestions on how a woman “should'' comport herself. The visual enigma of the female subject emerges from remembered experiences of violence, physical pain, and the struggle for calm. The surface becomes the skin, but the message is clear: look, but don’t touch. My complex visual vocabulary embraces free use of color, with pink in all its shades, a motif across multiple works, building a distinctly ‘non-pink’ view of the feminine experience. In the male minimalist-dominated ‘70s Joan Snyder claimed maximalism: to be “putting everything into her painting.” I identify with this personal language-building through “everything in and nothing left to lose,” whether it be different materials, colors, use of tools, or my own emotional investment.
Bio
Born and raised in Boston, Rosemary Taylor is a painter living and working between NYC and Boston. She received her MFA from Brooklyn College and her BFA at Massachusetts College of Art. In 2021, Rosemary was awarded an ApexArt Fellowship for the inaugural NYC Local Residency program. Additionally, Ms Taylor has been awarded the Joan Mitchell MFA Award in 2007 and was a 2017 Bronx Museum Artist in the Marketplace Fellow. She has exhibited extensively, including a solo exhibition Best Behavior at Kinescope Gallery in NYC in the fall of 2019, as well as Aljira Contemporary Art Center, The Bronx Museum of the Arts, CUE Art Foundation, Smack Mellon, Like the Spice, and Trestle Gallery. She has lectured at Brooklyn College, Tufts University, and Jamaica Center for Arts & Learning. She is currently an Adjunct Assistant Professor at LaGuardia Community College and a teaching artist in the Guggenheim Museum’s Learning Through Art Program.
