Gail Stoicheff
La Femme, 2018

The works in this series are totems invoking the artist’s Greek heritage; reexamining classical mythology through an unapologetic feminist methodology. The work speaks fluently in multiple painting languages—-swirling from abstraction to articulation and back again. The artist’s inventive practice incorporates sewing, and begins by either adding or removing color from canvas and velvet with oil paint, ink, dye, or bleach. The paintings are allowed to develop freely, with the whole working process recorded on their surface, from brush wiping and color testing to intentional gestures and traditional image-making.

The resulting works are bountiful; expressive traditions of American post-war abstraction congress with articulated rectangles—paintings within paintings—calling to mind icons on a computer screen or snapshots tacked on a wall. Elsewhere, ruffles and chainette fringe pour forth from seams.

Both finely detailed and unreserved, the work is at once intimate and boldly open—engendering a lively immediacy while also inviting a closer look. Like the mythological characters who inspired them, these works are forces of nature; recalling powerful, mysterious tales with powerfully mysterious works.