Fernberger Gallery Presents NICOLE WITTENBERG JUMPIN AT THE WOODSIDE — Preview

A spokesperson describes the event as follows:

“…When embarking on a new work, Wittenberg begins by creating pastel drawings and ink studies en plein aire, observing the surrounding wilderness, perceiving natural light, and constructing a new engagement with the real. In the studio, she then synthesizes her plein aire studies onto canvas. The work in the studio becomes an immersive experience that strikes a new relationship to the landscape, which best equivocates the experience of being there right now.

Wittenberg’s process could be compared to the tradition of the Les Nabis movement, a group of late nineteenth-century post-impressionist French painters whose members included Pierre Bonnard and Edouard Vuillard. In her bold palette, there can be found an allegiance to how Pierre Bonnard -one of Les Nabis’ originators -described his own painting: ‘Colour has just as strong a logic as form. It’s a matter of never giving up before one has managed to recreate the first impression.’

The works in this exhibition reveal vivid skies and twilight seascapes, vistas made searingly bright with hot-toned underpainting that inform and reflect subsequent layers of paint. The landscapes convey a huge jolt of sensation that carries the experience of being there -bursts of orange and yellow reflecting off swaying trees, tall grasses, bending flowers, and rolling tides. Named after Count Basie’s 1938 classic swing song Jumpin’ at the Woodside, Wittenberg’s canvases capture the jazz melody’s verve from the forest’s edge -transporting the viewer outside the confines of illustration, fantasy, or idealization, liberating the artist and viewer to experience what is real, here, and now…”

Photo: Courtesy of Fernberger Gallery.

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