Foro Italico
by Wendy Artin
November 11th – December 11th, 2005
The exhibit's focus is a series of elegant sepia watercolors of marble statues of athletes from the Foro Italico in Rome, Italy. These masterful watercolors of the 1920s Italian "supermen" are a logical segue in Artin's exploration of the ideal male form, from Greco-Roman heros to the fluid marble forms of Bernini, to the lithe bodies of the young Roman dancers she has engaged as models. Other watercolors on display are a winsome series of childhood toys, delectable still lifes, and sanguine nudes.
"Rome challenges me daily as an artist," says Artin. "The moving sun makes crisp shadows on white marble statues like puddles of watercolor, fleeting. With time I have learned to decipher the visual overload of Rome - to look closely and with patience, to find the most telling image or elegant composition in the city's multitude of layers."
As stated in the introduction of the exhibition's catalogue, "Light (and its corollary, conditions of shade and shadow) is the essential ingredient in Artin's world of graduated transparent washes. It is the dynamic transition in the same wash from clear water to intense pigment that tells the essential story of light and shadow."