Maxine Solomon:

From Void to a Dream

DATESSeptember 22 to November 18, 2012

RECEPTIONFriday, September 28 from 6:00 to 8:00 p.m.

Maxine Solomon, From Void to a Dream,oil on canvas

In the realm of abstraction, the paintings of Maxine Solomon elevate the viewer the experience of poetry. It is work of emotion and suggested metaphors through the use of color and emotive brushstrokes. Solomon uses both additive and subtractive processes to create a heavily textured and tortured surface, often obliterating and sometimes delineating the subject matter. The resulting canvases sometimes contain as many as 30 layers of paint. Her images are drawn from her experiences working and traveling throughout the world. As she states, "I think, react and speak through my paintings. The paint itself becomes my partner – its texture, its vibrancy, its very nature becomes a crucial component, enabling me to process and speak of that which I see in our shared world." The differences between one person's perception and another's reality are subjects often dealt with in her paintings. They draw the viewer into a world that is at once landscape and imagination.

The combination of quiet glazes with active brushstrokes helps to capture a moment in time, leaving the viewer to wonder if the image is merely an abstract painting or a colorful landscape. Delve deeper within the layers of paint to find hidden images and meanings or merely travel within these layers to see an intricate and textured surface – a choice left to the viewer. As I work, each painting speaks to me not only about the beauty of our world but also of its diversity and ecological endangerment – it's preservation as well as its withering away.

Maxine Solomon is also represented by ArtHaus Gallery, San Francisco.