Jackie Saccoccio

 

Jackie Saccoccio (1963 –2020) was an American abstract painter. Her works, considered examples of gestural abstraction, featured bright color, large canvases, and deliberately introduced randomness.Saccoccio's works have been displayed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, and the Museum of Fine Art in Boston. She received the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) Artadia award in 2015 and was also awarded grants from the Fulbright–Hays Program (1990), John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation (2000), and the American Academy in Rome.Starting in the 1990s, Saccoccio was known for her vivid and evocative works of gestural abstraction, building on the work of artists like Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell. Her works, inspired by abstract expressionism and Italian Baroque art, were part of a movement which emphasized adding vitality to abstract painting through experimentation with randomness and paint handling. Jerry Saltz, reviewing a 2007 show in The Village Voice, noted Saccoccio's influences: "Saccoccio's paintings come dangerously close to looking like mid-century abstraction, particularly the work of artists like Joan Mitchell and de Kooning. Yet if you spend time in this show, the old-school quotient subsides and sparks begin to fly."Saccoccio worked with large canvases on which she outlaid "expansive waves and splashes of bright, luminous color", creating fragmented visual spaces.She introduced randomness in her works by pouring and splattering paint while tilting the canvas in different directions.She also transferred paint between canvases, pulled them across, and scraped through dry paint pigments to add onto the randomness.In what has been described as an intensely physical process, she would sometimes press together two large and wet canvases, apply mica for an additional layer of sheen, and at times have as many as 50 layers of paint on her canvas.These actions, and the added bright colors, introduced an additional element of spontaneity to her works.The outcome was highly layered, vibrantly colored, drip-networked, and had large shifting fields of color. Wikipedia 

Kathleen Gemberling Adkison - Abstract Expressionism Art

 

Kathleen Gemberling Adkison (July 5, 1917 - 2010), was an American abstract painter.

Like Jackson Pollock, Adkison worked with her canvas on the floor. She is recognized as among the first female to do so. However, her focus is based on the natural beauty of rocks, trees, tall grasses and other images she perceived from her hikes with her husband.

Adkison was a critically acclaimed artist and highly recognized for her work. She was among only eight women included in Northwest Art Today at the 1962 Seattle World's Fair. She died in August 2010

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Emily Mason - Lyrical Abstraction

 

 "When I start a picture I like to use the medium as directly as I can . . . [this] puts me in a state of mind which avoids pictorial constraints. I try to use paint for its brilliance, transparency, opacity, liquidity, weight, warmth and coolness. These qualities guide me in a process which will determine the climate of the picture. All the while I work to define spatial relationships, resulting in certain kinds of places. I cannot name them but know intuitively when they appear.  — Emily Mason
Born and raised in New York City, Emily Mason’s art education began at home with her mother Alice Trumbull Mason, a founding member of the American Abstract Artists. A graduate of New York City’s High School of Music and Art, she attended Bennington College and the Cooper Union. In 1956 she was awarded a two-year Fulbright grant to paint in Venice, Italy. There she studied at the Accademia delle Belle Arti where she first experimented with blotting and transferring paint onto the surface of the canvas. Afterwards, Mason moved into her own studio in the Giudecca. During her time in Venice, she married the painter Wolf Kahn. They have two daughters, Cecily and Melany.
Mason has spent more than six decades exploring her distinctive vein of lyrical, luminous abstraction. Robert Berlind wrote in Art in America, “Mason works within the improvisational model of Abstract Expressionism, though notably without angst or bravado. Her oil on canvas paintings are distinguished by a sense of intriguing intimacy combined with uncompromising, though gentle, intensity. They evince a sense of structure within open, luminous space and juxtapose robust color harmonies with vivid contrasts that create an engaging optical vibration.”Since her first solo show in 1960 at the Area Gallery, Mason has exhibited regularly in New York City. In 1979 she was awarded the Ranger Fund Purchase Prize by the National Academy. She taught painting at Hunter College for more than 25 years. Her work is included in numerous public and private collections."(emilymasonstudio.com)