Gina Werfel

While the layering, and the contrast between stenciled and hand-drawn marks in a wide vocabulary of signs, suggest the influence of Photoshop on contemporary visual culture, they remain rooted in the overall space that Werfel once pursued in painting outdoors. As a daily swimmer, Werfel compares the act of painting to the movement of her body through water, an apt metaphor for her immersive compositions; if living in Northern California for the past eighteen years has inspired her to move beyond literal depictions of nature, it has only intensified her search for unity within the fragmentation of contemporary experience. As suburbia and commerce encroach on the monumental Western landscape, encounters with nature become more intimate and fleeting, yet are no less intense and deeply felt; they lurk in the suggestions of organic connections that animate her densely worked compositions.

Collection: Gina Werfel Collection