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Bio
Werfel’s recent paintings maintain a dynamic balance between figuration and abstraction. DeWitt Cheng in his catalog essay for Persistence of Vision calls her paintings,
“landscapes of metamorphosis that reveal themselves to the long gaze rather than the quick scan.”
About Werfel’s 2012 show at Jane Deering Gallery in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Independent’ critic , Charles Donelan wrote,
“The idiom she has chosen is about as close to timeless as painting gets, and the command she exercises over color, composition, and negative space ravishes the eye. These images reward sustained viewing in a way that’s nearly cinematic.”
“landscapes of metamorphosis that reveal themselves to the long gaze rather than the quick scan.”
About Werfel’s 2012 show at Jane Deering Gallery in Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara Independent’ critic , Charles Donelan wrote,
“The idiom she has chosen is about as close to timeless as painting gets, and the command she exercises over color, composition, and negative space ravishes the eye. These images reward sustained viewing in a way that’s nearly cinematic.”
Statement
Like polyphony in music, my work consists of textures of multiple independent “voices” or sources. I layer multiple elements to create painted universes; embedded vestiges of gestures suggest fragments of memories, glimpses inside the studio or out my window.
I create compositions that echo the spatial complexities of landscapes to which I had been drawn when I was painting outdoors – tumbling hills or underwater reflections. But now, fragments floating in a fluid, veiled space intrigue me more than the unified landscapes of my plein-air work. The paintings move between emptying out spaces behind veils of color and packing them in so densely that there is little air left.
-Gina Werfel
Reviews and Publications
- Review of Gina Werfel: In Context by Jonathan Goodman in Brooklyn Rail, ArtSeen, 09/2021
- Portland Press Herald 2/12/2017 reviewAbstract and landscape by a single brush at Elizabeth Moss Galleries. Gina Werfel’s ‘Geographies’ shows her enthusiasm for the act of painting.
Review by Daniel Kany - Interview with Gina Werfel on Painting Perceptions
- Huffington Post- November 2013
- Art Ltd- July 2012
- Catalogue California State University, Stanislaus “Persistence of Vision” (catalogue) 2011
- San Francisco Chronicle / SF Gate.com—Saturday, February 14, 2009
- Art in America—November 2007
- Sacramento Bee—May 2005
- Art in America—May 2004