Louisa Waber: Recent Painting and Drawing

Exhibition Dates: September 6, 2016 - October 1, 2016

Reception: Thursday, September 8, 6 - 8 pm

The Painting Center is pleased to present an exhibition of Louisa Waber's most recent paintings and work on paper. Resolute with both depth and vitality, examples of her abstract art have been noted for many years in exhibitions in New York, and can now be seen on their own together. Waber mentions Cezanne, Hofmann, de Kooning, and Guston, as a context of inspirers. But her current working mentality is also moved by Byzantine mosaics, and by geometry and architecture, a quality of airiness, and the moody industrial landscape seen from her studio window: old factories, the sky at a certain hour. Waber paints rhythm and light, a sense of being able to move in and out of the picture plane. er paintings are both direct and mysterious. As she paints, she says, she accepts that her paintings are working when they take on a voice of their own and she can respond to what they are saying. Every mark or stroke can exist only in the moment. The moment in the process cannot be repeated. Even after only five minutes, it becomes a different mark and a different painting. Whether a painting is finished or not is often unclear to her - some paintings always want more. Others are more definitive, they practically shout, "done." Sometimes she'll leave a painting alone for weeks or months, and then revisit it once new possibilities reveal themselves. But that is the finished feeling of her works: possibility revealing itself.