Locks Gallery is pleased to debut a new group of paintings by artist Elizabeth Osborne in Inside / Out, coinciding with an exhibition of the artist's work, Veils of Color, on view through November 15th at the Michener Art Museum. Inside / Out will be on view at Locks Gallery from August 7, through September 26, 2015. Two receptions will be held for the artist at the gallery on Thursday, August 6th and Friday, September 11th from 5:30 to 7:30pm.
In the accompanying publication to the Michener exhibition, curator Kirsten M. Jensen, PhD writes, "What makes Osborne’s process unique is how she blends the specific with the abstract. She walks a tightrope– as she has described it– between representation and abstraction, and it is her skillful use and blending of color that unites the two into a subtle pas de deux, in which her subjects are both revealed and concealed by veils of color.”
Reengaging with the iconography of previous bodies of work, the new paintings on view mark Osborne's return back to figurative painting after a period of total abstraction– utilzing bookcases, her studio painting storage, and windows as a point of departure for further play with blocks of color within the paintings. Reinserting elements of personal narrative into her formalist explorations of the luminosity of color, these works present intimate and more psychological perspectives of her daily life. Jensen writes, "After a few years of painting her Color Abstractions, Osborne felt that she was missing something 'hard to come up against,' to use Diebenkorn’s own words. 'I wanted to push the limit for myself again,' she stated, and for that she turned to figure painting, just like Diebenkorn did. In her new paintings, Osborne looked to combine the treatment of the figure in her early 1960s canvases with her latest work."
Elizabeth Osborne's work was the subject of a 2009 retrospective exhibition, The Color of Light, curated by Robert Cozzolino at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She has exhibited extensively throughout the United States for over forty years. Her work is included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA; Woodmere Art Museum, Philadelphia, PA; The State Museum of Pennsylvania, Harrisburg, PA; Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, Philadelphia, PA; Delaware Art Museum, Wilmington, DE; and McNay Art Museum, San Antonio, TX. Veils of Color, an exhibition of unique career-spanning pairings and groupings of both figurative and abstract works is on view at the Michener Art Museum through November 15th. An exhibition focused on Osborne's early work from the 1960s will be on view at the Delaware Art Museum in 2016.
