Celebrating twenty-five years of showing with Gurari Collections, Rome-based artist Wendy Artin delivers fecundity and abundance with fifty exquisite new watercolors. Cornucopia is an offering of hand-picked, beautiful moments: curious blossoms and ripening fruit, carefully selected by Artin or offered to her by family and friends, surround centuries-old statues of nymphs, maenads, and gods. Also on display will be a smattering of work from past exhibits, including figures and watercolors of walls.
With velvety leaves and effusive petals, pansies emerge spontaneously from the field of white paper, turning this way and that: “What happens to the beautiful little faces when they are looking sideways and in the shadow, or when they have leaves surrounding them and their small faces are peeking out? Looking at pansies can become a whole world... The word pansy comes from the French word pensée: if you give someone a pansy, it means you are thinking of them,” Artin says.
Artin’s materials pool and spread across the page: “each watercolor is an adventure because I do not know what is going to happen when I put paint down, what I am going to try to keep, what I am going to try to leave,” she reflects. The fleeting moment is captured in the puddles of water, which, when left in the exact right position, for exactly the right amount of time, dry into a crisp curl of stone hair, the mottling skin of a pear, the little tendril on the poppy’s stem.
Goujon’s frolicking, stylized nymphs, surrounded by putti and strange Renaissance dolphins, emerge, ephemeral, from Artin’s watery palate. With abstract washes that turn to precise detail, her paintings imbue her stone muses with life and movement.
Benoît Gréan, composer of the seven-poem suite which accompanies the show catalogue, describes Artin's work as: “the miracle of the watercolorist’s gesture, who, throwing water and pigment on paper, births a fruit, a flower, a nude, a landscape.”
Artist Acclaim and Awards
Wendy Artin is the Fine Arts winner of the 2023 Arthur Ross Award for Excellence in the Classical Tradition awarded by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA). She studied in the Museum School in Boston and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
Please inquire to order Cornucopia catalogues. We anticipate them to be available later in November, check back for an update.
Gallery hours are by appointment or generally open, Tuesday - Saturday, 12pm. to 5:00pm, Sundays by appointment or chance.
Gurari Collections, 460 Harrison Avenue, Boston MA 02118, +1 (617) 367-9800
Website - gurari.com - guraricollections@gmail.com Gurari Collections Inquiries
Contact: Russ Gerard - text 617-650-4644
