Locks Gallery is pleased to present Endless Source, an exhibition of new and recent paintings by Neysa Grassi, highlighting the elemental qualities of water in her work. The exhibition will be on view from April 4 through April 30, 2014, with a reception for the artist on Friday, April 4, 2014 from 5:30-7:30pm.
Naming each of her new paintings after seemingly anonymous lakes and ponds, Grassi culled the titles from actual bodies of water. These names poetically mimic her abstractions which point to specific sensations and simultaneously refrain from a clear reading. Grassi's work often evokes elemental qualities, but the importance of water, and its erosive sculpting and weathering force, is crucial to understanding her own studio practice.
Marked by their ethereal and atmospheric quality, each of Grassi's paintings include numerous layers of paint. That additive process is balanced with the subtractive actions of scarring, wiping out, scraping, and sanding down that which she has applied to the canvas or panel. Grassi's studio practice begins with water-based media, making delicate and energetic gouache paintings on paper as she develops ideas for larger works. As writer and critic Susan Stewart noted in 2011, "She has always been influenced by the sense of water and air that moves through the drawings of Leonardo da Vinci and Vincent Van Gogh."
Grassi lives and works in Philadelphia, where she is a faculty critic at PAFA and was a recipient of a Pew Fellowship in the Arts. She has had solo exhibitions at several museums, including the Pensacola Art Museum, FL and the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, PA. Since 1990 the artist has had over 18 one-person exhibitions in galleries in Philadelphia and New York. Her work is in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, and the Woodmere Art Museum. Recently she was included in Modern Women at PAFA: From Cassatt to OKeeffeand The Female Gaze: Women Artists Making Their World at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts.
