Wendy Artin, Poppy Dance, 19x34 cm, watercolor, 2024
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Flowers, Friezes & Frescoes
New Watercolors on Paper by Wendy Artin
November 2024, Gurari Collections, Boston
Wendy Artin, Three Fluted Columns, 170x102 cm, watercolor, 2024
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Dancing poppies, Persian archers and Roman ruins, American Artist Wendy Artin’s delicate mastery of watercolor brings ancient and ephemeral beauty to life in her latest exhibition, Flowers, Friezes and Frescoes.
Featuring 50 exquisite watercolors, her work captures fleeting moments, drawing inspiration from 1st Century BC Roman frescoes of Livia’s Garden, vibrant Persian archers from the Royal Palace of Darius I, poppies in bloom, ancient ruins and her ongoing collaboration with life models.
Wendy Artin, Tryptic from Livia's Garden, 13x24 cm, watercolor, 2024
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“Pigments drift as water evaporates until the paint settles in the right place to evoke the image. Whether painting watercolors of frescoes, enameled brick tiles, ruins or red poppies, I try to give the viewer a feeling of total familiarity, a feeling that the painting is exactly what they love about the subject matter, and shows the simplicity with which images are created with puddles of colored water,” said Artin.
Wendy Artin, Palatino, 72x102 cm, watercolor on paper, 2024
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From ephemeral to eternal
In a series of delicate paintings of poppies, the fragile stems hold up brilliant blooms, like red crepe paper with infinitely dark blackish blue centers, crisscrossed velvety black patterns, stamens and seeds.
“The poppies are fleeting, they soon curl up and disappear. I painted the spring flowers every day until the gardeners of Villa Doria Pamphilj mowed them down,” said the Rome-based painter.
The exhibition features the largest landscape painting Artin has produced -- a double landscape of 70 cm x 200 cm – that depicts Rome’s Palatine Hill, home to the ruins of temples and imperial palaces, set against a backdrop of pine trees with their iconic towering foliage tops.
Wendy Artin, Archers, Palace of Darius, 57x138 cm, watercolor, 2024
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Artin revisits the frescoes of Livia’s Garden, housed at the Museo Nazionale Romano di Palazzo Massimo, conveying not only their vibrant colors but also the weathered beauty of their erosion. Fragmentary, the frescoes buzz with birds, plants, color and washed out spaces.
“The question is how to tackle the texture of erosion. I began by painting small Japanese-y pieces before scaling up to larger works. I hoped to break free from describing Livia’s Garden, to capture what it feels like to be standing before the frescoes,” she said.
Wendy Artin, Two Roman Domes, 17x24 cm, watercolor, 2024
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The exhibition also showcases Persian friezes from the palace of Darius I, featuring detailed depictions of archers and mythical creatures. Artin captures the interplay between the glazed bricks and the gaps between them, inviting viewers to piece together the images.
“The white mortar between the glazed enamel bricks is visually fascinating in part because your eye needs to work to connect the image behind it. I love the way the friezes made up of many different smaller images, the bricks, like pixels on a gigantic multiscreen image,” said Artin.
Also included are dynamic male nude studies, reflecting Artin’s ongoing collaboration with live models. These figures, caught in fluid motion, echo the transient nature of both human life and ancient civilizations.
Wendy Artin, Giuseppe Stretch, 23x33 cm, watercolor, 2024
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Artist Acclaim and Awards
Wendy Artin was recently honored with the 2023 Arthur Ross Award for Excellence in the Classical Tradition by the Institute of Classical Architecture & Art (ICAA). She studied at the Museum School in Boston and the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris.
The show of 50 watercolor paintings will be available at the Gurari Collections and online.
Exhibit: November 1st, 2024 to January 12th, 2025.
Gurari Collections, 460 Harrison Avenue, Boston MA 02118, +1 (617) 367-9800 gurari.com
Contact: Russ Gerard guraricollections@gmail.com
Wendy Artin, Temple of Saturn, 70x72 cm, watercolor, 2024