The High Contrast

Hello World, 2007
27″ x 35″
Acrylic and high gloss medium on masonite

I want to give a shout out to my girl Nicole (Mauser) Brown who just recently got a new studio space in KC. Tonight is Third Friday’s, which I’ve never heard of but seems similar to First Friday’s. I’d like to invite you to stop by and check out her stuff, she is extremely talented!!!

This write up on Creative Loafing by Megan Voeller eloquently describes Nicole’s talent:

Mauser’s paintings find a space to play in the ambiguous territory between organic and geometric form. In one of her larger constructions, “Imbue & Collapse,” (pictured below) she offers up a landscape divided into amorphous solids filled with swirls of color and painstakingly rendered crystalline outlines. On a matte black background split horizontally by a river of watery teal brushstrokes, it’s as if the two types of form meet for battle, each staking out their respective territories. In “Hot Air,” a stream of interlocking hexagons bursts from the mouth — we hope, but it could be any orifice — of a mottled pink creature, its colorfully chaotic body vomiting out pure geometry.

Imbue & Collapse, 2007
40″ x 52″
Acrylic and high gloss medium on masonite

The article goes on to say:

Negative space often plays a starring role in her compositions, as in “Opposite Oration,” (pictured below) a square panel dominated by a thin, crevasse-like line encircling much of the canvas’ territory. The blue-gray void sliced by the line, as if by an earthquake’s fault line, becomes the setting for an optical illusion: The ringed territory projects out and recedes back into space.

Opposite Oration, 2007
48″ x 48″
Acrylic on masonite

Next month’s Third Friday on May 16th, there will be Open Studios as always but in addition there is a group show of Studio Residency Artists work at Paragraph Gallery (a few steps away). The show will feature 3 of Nicole’s paintings and the works of five other Studio Residency Artists. There will be an artist talk preceding the opening. So, if you can’t make it this time, stop by next month to see the studio and work in the gallery.

See more of my favorites after the jump! or check her out at the Green Contemporary site

Florida Air, 2006
41″ x 41″
Acrylic on masonite