The Women was the title of Sarah Awad's (NAP #93) first solo exhibition at Diane Rosenstein Fine Art this past November.  The press release provides an immediate context for the work: “The artist reawakens our detached assumptions about the transcendent purity of minimalism and -- in what becomes a return of ‘The Return of the Figure’ -- continues a contemporary conversation with the work of Cecily Brown, Marlene Dumas, and John Currin.”  The figure in art can exist as a fundamentally formal aspect of how we perceive 2D images (any shape on a picture plane that appears in front of a pictorial ground is technically a figure), and also as the specific subject matter designation of people in the picture.  Somewhere between and to the side of those notions is the issue of the female nude in art. – Jason Ramos, Los Angeles Contributor

Sarah Awad | The Women, installation view, Courtesy of Diane Rosenstein Fine Art/photo by Craig Kirk

In this Process of a Painting, we follow painter Nick Brown through his creation of Gloaming which is part of his larger, ongoing series Ice House.

English-born and LA-based Nick Brown paints oversized and grandiose oil paintings of an unexpected LA subject: snow and ice. Journeying into surrounding mountain communities outside of Los Angeles, he photographs glimpses of what man has left behind to be re-subsumed by the earth…Architectural ruins, signs of old houses and lives once lived, and decaying wood burning ovens and chimneys all point to mother nature’s slow, yet beautiful decay. – Ellen C. Caldwell

Nick Brown | Gloaming, 2013, oil on canvas, 96"x 72"x 19 1/2"

The Tamarind Institute was founded in 1960 by June Wayne with the intent of revitalizing and elevating the status of lithography in the U.S.; It moved to Albuquerque in 1970 where it became affiliated with the University of New Mexico. With a strong focus on research, education, collaborative exchange and experimentation, Tamarind has undeniably changed the course of lithography through its 54 years of operation.

Fresh off a couple of high-profile exhibitions at Susan Vielmetter in Los Angeles and DUVE Berlin, New York-based painter Hayal Pozanti made a brief stop in Albuquerque in late-January for a week-long printmaking residency at the Tamarind Institute. Her efforts resulted in several monotypes and two lithographs that will be editioned later this spring. During her visit, we had the opportunity to talk about her experience at Tamarind as her first foray into lithography. – Claude Smith, Albuquerque/Santa Fe Contributor

Hayal Pozanti at Tamarind; photo courtesy of Logan Bellew

Christopher Kane Taylor’s (NAP #108) work is bright, bold, humorous, and impulsive. His sentiments, scrawled in an almost-exaggerated hand-painted form, address his life, concerns, and future.  While humorous at times, this text is also deep and thought provoking.

After Taylor was recently featured in NAP, I couldn’t stop thinking about some of his paintings and his resonating words, so I spoke to Taylor about his process and inspiration behind his works… - Ellen C. Caldwell

Christopher Kane Taylor | Whoop Whoop, acrylic, ink on paper 15 inches x 33 inches, 2013. Courtesy of the Artist.

It is hard not to like Cable Griffith’s landscapes. They invite you into their fantastical scenes with a bright sense of familiarity that permeates the patterned, pixel-like worlds and is almost instantly recognizable from one of recent generations’ favorite past times—video games. Quest, the artist’s new show at G. Gibson Gallery in Seattle, continues the digitally-inspired lands for which the artist has become known, but buried beneath the solid, white clouds and systematized, geometric trees, a more serious pursuit reveals itself.  As Exhibitions Curator at Cornish College of the Arts, Griffith has an abundance of experiences and networks that parallel the complexity of the landscapes he builds.   I caught up with the artist to uncover more about Quest and to talk about an exhibition of northwest painter Robert C. Jones’s work on view at the gallery he oversees at Cornish. — Erin Langner, Seattle Contributor

Cable Griffith | Terra Terma, 2013, acrylic on canvas, 18 x 18 inches, image courtesy of G. Gibson Gallery.

To say that JPEG images don’t do justice to Mitzi Pederson’s work at Ratio 3 (3:43, open through Saturday, February 15th) is a bit of an understatement. Her exploration of materials finds her once again working with tulle, a fine netting that is lightweight and translucent and seemingly fragile from up close -- good luck capturing that with your DSLR. Sculpturally, Pederson continues to work with simple arrangements of cinder blocks on the floor that are formally reminiscent of Carl Andre. On the walls her assemblages are clear references to painting -- squint your eyes enough and Pederson’s color palette might remind you of Monet’s Rouen Cathedral, step back and you’re sure to find a connection to Rebecca Morris’ whimsical abstractions. I recently had the chance to email Mitzi a few questions about her show, her materials, and her interest in painting. Her answers after the jump. -- Matt Smith Chavez, San Francisco Contributor

Mitzi Pederson | Untitled, 2014, Tulle, ink, 35 x 31 inches. Courtesy of Ratio 3

Iva Gueorguieva’s (NAP #73) paintings, on view at Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe in New York, bring a breathe of California sun to our frigid New York winter. Working up the surfaces of her large canvases into almost a fetishized frenzy, the paintings are abstract, yet indicative of movement. By denying viewers the ability to rest their eyes on any one component for too long, her works are both mesmerizing and disconcerting, inducing frustration as one tries to pinpoint figures or structures within the compositions. Fractions, edges, and suggestions of such imagery exist, but are ungraspable as they dissolve into the chaos of each scene. – Nadiah Fellah, NYC Contributor

Installation view, Iva Gueorguieva at Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe, January 30 – March 8, 2014. Courtesy Ameringer | McEnery | Yohe.

In Radcliffe Bailey’s (NAP #28) new exhibition, Maroons, on view at Jack Shainman Gallery in New York, the Atlanta-based artist challenges the dominant history of slavery, and probes the unexpected cultural interactions that it inadvertently promoted. The show’s title references the “maroon” communities of escaped African slaves that formed illicit settlements throughout the Americas and the Caribbean. The English name for these “maroons” comes from the Taíno word símaran, a word describing the flight of an arrow. Taíno is the indigenous culture and language of Caribbean islands like Hispaniola that the colonists first made landfall on, making it an appropriate root for the term. The title also primes viewers for the issues of displacement, diaspora, and migration that the works in this show primarily engage. – Nadiah Fellah, NYC Contributor

Installation view showing Vessel, 2012 (left), tarp, iron, vintage model ship, wicker basket and glass, 120 x 188 x 89 inches; and Pensive, 2013 (right), bronze and rough-sawn fir logs, 58 x 39 ¼ x 45 ¼ inches. Courtesy Jack Shainman Gallery.

Have you ever Google'd yourself? (Is it profane even, to use 'Google' as a verb?) As we leave digital footprints over multiple social media platforms, like a slightly exaggerated profile on an online dating site or a carefully composed Instagram shot (to one-up our friend's idyllic beach photo), we may ask ourselves 'how much of me is there?' And how much of that factors into our presence in and understanding of the greater physical world? In Century of the Self, organized by independent curator Sarah C. Bancroft at Lora Reynolds Gallery, artist Alexandra Grant dives into feverishly detailed compositions that embrace language as both quotable texts and visual tools. — Brian Fee, Austin contributor

Alexandra Grant | Alexandra Grant: Century of the Self installation view, January 18 – March 15, 2014. Courtesy the artist and Lora Reynolds Gallery, Austin.

Terrence Campagna uses new and found wood to make art that is both painterly and sculptural.  Gathering wood from a range of places including Wisconsin, Nebraska, New York and more, Campagna (NAP #101) pieces together beautifully weathered pieces with newer and bolder painted pieces that are inspired by the traffic signs on the interstate. 

In a way, his work encapsulates the blurriness our eyes encounter when taking in the juxtaposition of aged buildings and new signs we see while speeding down an interstate.  As with all Process of a Painting pieces, we follow Campagna’s work from start to finish…A process which began by filming video studies for inspiration and one which ended with two additional pieces (Untitled) pictured at the end of the post. – Ellen C. Caldwell, Los Angeles Contributor

Terrence Campagna | Plumule (Reedsburg, WI/ Omaha, NE/ Marquette, NE/ Utica, NY), 10' x 5.5' x 1', 2013.