The lines she develops in the text paintings are so strong you can forget the text, but I’d recommend against that. (Thank you, Sarah.) Abstracts, not-quite-abstracts, and text paintings make up her three-pronged attack. Whew! I was unfamiliar with EJ Hauser’s work before artist Sarah Peters introduced me to it. crew man, 2008, oil and enamel on wood panel, 10″ x 12″ĮJ Hauser: See the making-me-cry-in-your-studio rule above. Kate is the one artist for whom I put aside my self-imposed no-artists-with-representation rule.

It’s a weirdly triumphant act for both the artist and the viewer. In the destruction of her heart, she makes mine a little less broken. I mean, the artist takes an axe to a heart made out of lumber. The video Heartbreaker is from 2004, but I couldn’t pass up the irony of having it in the show. If I do a studio visit with you and your work makes me cry, well then, if I I curate a show a couple years later I’m probably going to ask you to be in it. Back and forth they go, making me wonder who’s in charge. In one painting the color and action fills the canvas, and in the other Gilfilen let’s the white space fly. The dominance shifts back and forth between the voices and sometimes they share the middle. 27 x 17 inchesīeth Gilfilen: The two paintings we chose for the show are awesome gestures of texture and space-building on their own, but side-by-side they sing harmony like Gary Louris and Lucinda Williams on Williams’ song, Essence. acrylic ink on cut paper paint samples mounted on board. They’re finely tuned vortices of color, line, and space. Where is my head?” Her swaths aren’t grand, sweeping gestures of the brush though. I’ll be standing in front of a painting and then suddenly I’m all, like, “Da-amn.

Sometimes it rips my head off right away and sometimes it takes awhile, consuming me slowly. We just have to keep our eyes open and our hearts on the block. The world slows down and you can almost feel the shards coming back together ( Blondie style), the sinewy shreds of tissue reconnecting ( David Lynch style). I knew when I was offered this show that I wanted to include artists who have provided me with those moments of “unbreaking”. LOTS of therapy.) Every once in awhile I’ll come across art that reverses the damage done, at least a little bit.

There are plenty of ways to lighten the burden though, and one of them is to look at art. I’m not tipping you to anything new by pointing out that most of us make it past childhood, grow up, and drag our “long black bag” of heartbreak along for the ride. Quite frankly, I’m surprised we all aren’t in cardiac arrest by the time we’re 8.

Unbreak my heart video guy