Black and Orange  © Judith Nilson

  Five new, richly-pigmented, finely-detailed, abstract paintings by Brooklyn artist Judith Nilson will go on display at Safe-T-Gallery on Thursday May 15th in a show aptly entitled “Five Paintings.”
  Working from a base of intense color, four of the five paintings dark with graphite, each painting develops a patina-like network of fine markings. These marks, mostly made with the edge of a razor, resolve into complex forms that evoke both biomorphic and geological features. As the marks extend over the surface and into the depths of the picture, an over-arching composition emerges that contains both tense emotional passages, but also areas where time moves at a much slower, almost evolutionary pace.
  The overlay of markings gives the paintings a life-like scalability. The paintings are fairly large sized (about 4 or 5 feet across) with the deep overall color saturation of a Turner or a Rothko, vibrantly visible from a distance. But as the viewer approaches, Nilson’s smaller, ‘hand-sized’, markings become more clearly defined, and the viewer is presented with an interior universe that has its own set of precepts and rules, where each element is integral to the whole yet stands apart as its own independent creation.
  The five paintings in this show were all produced by Nilson within the last year, and have a maturity and authority that can only come after years of observation, drawing, and painting. These are not fast, conceptual pieces; they present a slower meditative vision, revelling in the complexities of color and line. Nilson writes, “My focus is on illumination and the complex psychological effects color, or its lack, produce.”
  Judith Nilson has won numerous awards and grants for her painting, including a Pollock-Krasner Foundation Grant, and a Special Opportunity grant from the New York Foundation for the Arts. This will be her first one-woman show at Safe-T-Gallery. Please join us at a reception for the artist on Thursday May 15th from 6 to 8 PM.