Principal Juror - Lynn M. Herbert, Senior Curator, Contemporary Arts Museum Houston

Juror’s Comments – These are good times for contemporary painting because artists, as this selection so well represents, clearly feel free and empowered to pursue whatever their own agenda, interests, or visions might be. Gone are the days when one style or another held sway. Fortunately for us, these days anything and everything goes. Such freedom might suggest a wild orgy of superficial experimentation, but what I hope this selection illustrates is anything but. Rather, this freedom has raised the bar for artists. Without a predominant doctrine, ‘ism, or style to prop them up, these artists have had to find their own way. They have had to work hard to chart out their own territory, stake a claim (so to speak), and convince us of that claim’s merit. As such, their works carry with them a conviction and an inner strength that one can sense even in reproduction.

In this selection you will find figurative and abstract work, as well as landscape, still-life, and portraiture. They range from romantic to surreal to grotesque to realist. Some are playful, while others are serious, nostalgic, and even mystical. Variety truly abounds.

Brian O’Conner presents us with a parade of nocturnal oddfellows parachuting about with their pants filled with contemporary detritus; Mark Greenwalt’s realm is populated with exquisitely drawn and disturbingly dreamlike, truncated mix-and-match figures; and Scott Greene’s array of satellite dishes (not our culture’s greatest aesthetic contribution) somehow morph into beautiful, almost Rococo landscapes.

Julie Bozzi and Robert Cocke’s landscapes accentuate the horizontality and quiet calm Mother Nature’s gifts can offer us, while Waddy Armstrong and Liz Ward have chosen to focus on nature a little more closely: Armstrong’s silhouetted branches and leaves are as varied and blue as the sky we would expect to see behind them, and Ward’s watercolor medium is as organic as the plant forms it represents.

More rooted in reality, John Hull and Stephen Batura find painterly ways in which to make subjects such as junk yards and train wrecks most compelling. David Leonard’s luminous “Totem Poles” allows us to revel in the formal rigor and organization to be found in industrial blight, while Lisa Grossman’s aerial view of an ambling river further leads us to meditate on the ways in which humankind and nature often converge. Nothing is too banal to be considered subject matter. Nicholas Bakaysa’s “Two Young Men, One Looking at His Cell Phone” is, on the surface, simply that, yet the expressions and gestures of the boys take it to another level; it is a portrait of our times. Katy O’Connor’s interacting couples and Joey Fauerso’s figures also offer us an opportunity to see poignancy in the everyday.

Stephanie McMahon’s shaped canvases are just the beginning of her abstract exploration into line and gesture. “Exuberance” is the word that comes to mind when looking at Ginger Mongiello’s “Surface Dive.” Mongiello’s veritable rainbow of colors in staccato drips and lines dance across the canvas.

Even the technique of collage appears to be alive and well in this group. Thuong Nguyen, Nancy Ferro, and Helmut Barnett are continuing this time-honored tradition in innovative works, both intimate and monumental in scale.

Spirituality and transcendence are also in the offing. In Joanne Kerrihard’s atmospheric “Sirens,” secret elements occasionally reveal themselves, while in Kate Petley’s “1000 Sheep Eyes” what lay before us could in fact be interpreted in a variety of ways. The concentric red circles in Annette Lawrence’s “Red Ellipse” draw us in to an abstract trance, while the full moon in Lynn Randolph’s “Wreath II” takes us to a place beyond our knowing.

The still-life genre is brought to life in works by Lloyd Walsh and Christopher Terry. In Walsh’s table-top display, the drapery folds and iconographic symbols one associates with old master still-lifes are joltingly brought into the present day with a selection of artfully arranged doughnuts. And in Terry’s still-life of lemons, it is the discreet cruciform pattern installed overhead that suggests that there is more than meets the eye.

Lastly, Ryan Bown’s portrait of Albert Einstein made with 26,000 painted Q-tips makes one think that the great man of science himself would appreciate Bown’s willingness to embrace such a challenge and through methodical and meticulous work, find such a memorable solution.