Nocturnes: The Nighttime Landscapes of Emily Church and Kathryn Lynch
MARCH 13 - APRIL 18, 2020
CO-CURATED BY BARTHOLOMEW F. BLAND AND MATT NASSER
OPENING RECEPTION: FRIDAY, MARCH 13, 6-8PM
The word "nocturne" conjures Frédéric Chopin’s dreamy piano solos and the misty canvases of James McNeill Whistler. The nocturne is romanticized shorthand - a time for reflection, a time for decadence, a time for repose. Illuminated by streetlights or neon signs, the nocturne can symbolize the urban Mecca, a pulse beating through the darkness. Kathryn Lynch embraces this urban nocturnal mode in works depicting the great curved black hulls of ships in New York’s Harbor at night, which conjure the famous 1935 Normandie poster by Adolphe Mouron Cassandre. Lynch’s works also suggest the hard-lined urban nocturnes by early 20th century precisionist George Ault, showcasing bridges, trains, and the modern rhythm of the nocturne City.The nocturne can also represent the pastoral Arcadian ideal, the atmosphere softened and thickened into evening twilight: the reflective moment of the day T.S. Eliot called the Violet Hour. This emotional response to the night sky has been exploited by artists since the early 19th century artist Casper David Freidrich painted his famous scenes of couples observing the moon in reverie. Emily Church draws inspiration for her surprisingly colorful canvases of night from great artists of the past: the Romantic British landscapes of John Constable and J.M.W. Turner; the Modernist works of Georgia O’Keeffe and Marsden Hartley - all devoted painters of the moon and the night sky. The night sky shifts our thoughts and feelings, recalling myth and ritual, conjuring love, romance, and assignation. Whether pearl grey, inky black, or hued purple, the onset of evening signals a change to our deeper, dreamlike selves. In this dynamic installation Church and Lynch each explore this heightened dreamlike state, providing viewers with a sublime emotional response to the night rhythms that show our lives.
- Bartholomew F. Bland
Executive Director, Lehman College Art Gallery
About the Artists
Emily Church
Emily Church makes paintings from scratch, putting together the frames, stretching the linen, making gesso and paint. The process allows time for contemplation before image making and is a reaction to the Internet age of immediate access. Her paintings derive from lived experience of natural events, primarily from her home base of Prospect Park and New York City surrounding areas. A sunset, a moonrise, a storm. They reference history, the skies of Constable and Turner, the land of O’Keeffe and Hartley, yet they persist as contemporary. Of late, the rainbow has become a significant recurring symbol, and feels like either a beacon of hope or a harbinger of things to come, as the political landscape continues to shift and the natural world as we know it vanishes. As landscapes Church has known in her lifetime are altered due to climate change, these paintings are her attempt to bare witness to the passing seasons, ephemeral light, weather as it mercilessly engulfs, the rainbow as it flashes briefly across the sky, begging to be noticed and gone in an instant.
Church grew up in Louisville, Kentucky where the experience of nature coupled with attending an urban arts high school influenced her artistic process. She attended Washington University in St. Louis, earning a BFA in sculpture with a special focus in print and paper making. Since 2008, Church has maintained a studio in the Greenwood Heights neighborhood of Brooklyn. She received a Masters of Fine Arts in Painting from the New York Studio School in 2012. Church has attended artist residencies at the Cité Internationale des Arts in Paris, France, the Vermont Studio Center in Johnson, VT, and Yaddo artist colony in Saratoga Springs, NY. Church’s paintings and handmade artist books can be found in the collections of The John McEnroe Library at the New York Studio School, The Hyatt Regency of Louisville, KY, the University of Louisville Rare Book Collection, Ekstrom Library, Washington University in St. Louis Rare Book Library, and the Sam Fox School of Art collection, among numerous other private and corporate collections. She lives with her husband and two daughters in Brooklyn, NY. www.emilychurchart.com / social media @emilychurchart A
Kathryn Lynch
(bn. Philadelphia, PA) paints her surroundings. For her the buildings, streets and traffic aren’t just architecture and byways but symbols for the lives we live in an oh-so chaotic world. Her recent views of boats, tugs and the river are images of things we all know and recognize. Expressed with a palette that is masterfully warm and tonal, they are the color of seasons – gray and green and times of day – orange and blue. They are also the symbols of the ongoing solitary traveller in each of us. Lynch’s paintings describe the storms we confront , the wind and the rain that push against us and the sun that finally shines.
Kathryn deals with notions of space and light and then with the slightest application of color, a form such as a boat or a tree come into play.
Kathryn Lynch has an MFA from the University of Pennsylvania and has been invited to Skowhegan, Yaddo, The Marie Walsh Foundation and The Vermont Studio Center. She has exhibited in numerous one person and group exhibitions.