love the new series of paintings by julia katz! hidell brooks gallery had their first solo exhibition for the chicago based painter last year. her paintings are full of luminous color and bursting with energy. her main focus is the figure in movement but is emphasized by the abstract quality of her backgrounds. the combination is fluid and perfectly matched. the colors are strong but gorgeous.

In 2006, I started working with a theme of the figure in motion. My interest in that theme has evolved over time, shifting toward the interaction of a moving figure with its environment and continuing to grow to include other concepts of motion and energy. Those may be subtle biological or psychological energies, or enormous impersonal energies of our natural world.

I use no visual references for the gestural abstraction in these paintings, although I have in mind that the forms I am inventing are organic and suggestive of nature. I work spontaneously and impulsively. Looking for compositions that strike me intuitively, I often rotate the paintings in all 4 directions as I paint, searching for visual forms and relationships that occur unintentionally.

new paintings by julia katz will arrive this summer at hidell brooks gallery. we will be anxiously anticipating their arrival!!!