Photographed by: Adrian Wilson

An exhibition curated by Heskin Projects:
Elizabeth Heskin, Tracey Ravdin Perlmutter, and Patricia Spergel

While each of these three artists could be classified as still life painters, there is nothing still or traditional in their work. Whether through subject matter, scale or energy of paint application, these painters each add a personal imprint to the genre. Still life painting is often a means to an end. Giorgio Morandi was painting dusty bottles and their relationship to each other and the space, but his paintings were about so much more- transcendent light, dusty color, melancholy evinced by the tilt of a jug handle or the dip of a vase top. Xico Greenwald approaches his arrangements of heirloom plates, vases, and bowls quite classically, but the scale of his oil paintings surprises the viewer and draws one right into the carefully constructed set up. His virtuosic paint handling and sophisticated palette make the eye flit around the entire surface, taking in each detail.  Tracy Miller’s paintings combine a cornucopia of recognizable objects, often food and beverages, with painted abstract passages and a fantastic sense of humor and irony. Images of “lowbrow” beer cans coexist with flowers or frilly decorated cakes (some painted with actual cake icing applicators), all in a brightly swirling maelstrom of brushstrokes. Mary Jo Vath’s smaller scale paintings captivate the viewer  with the secret lives of her objects--whether they are a quirkily rendered alligator mask, a Sponge Bob piñata, or a very traditional floral/vase image. Her exquisite paint application may say Francisco de Zurbaran, but the oddly absurd and specific quality of her subject matter telegraphs that this is a purely 21st century approach. While Vath works almost entirely from life, she insists that she is “not after the facts of the thing, but rather its magic.”  The unifying quality in all these paintings is the inventiveness and deeply personal observation of each of these talented artists.

About the Artists:

Peter (“Xico”) Greenwald (b. 1977, Washington, D.C.) earned a BA from Bard College and an MFA from Brooklyn College, CUNY. His artwork has been shown at numerous galleries, including George Billis Gallery, NYC, Nancy Margolis Gallery, NYC, The College of William & Mary, Andrews Gallery, Williamsburg, VA, The Painting Center, NYC, Alice Gauvin Gallery, Portland, ME and Thompson Giroux Gallery, Chatham, NY. He has curated exhibitions at Queens College Art Center, Long Island University’s Selena Gallery and Westbeth Gallery. He has taught at The New York Studio School, Pratt Institute, ICA Italy, Rider University and Mount Gretna School of Art. He is currently Associate Professor at Borough of Manhattan Community College, CUNY. His essays, reviews and interviews have been published in The Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, The New York Sun and artcritical.com. Greenwald lives and works in New York City.

Tracy Miller (b. 1966, Storm Lake, IA) received a BFA from the University of Iowa, and an MFA from the University of California at Berkeley and attended Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture. Her work has been featured in numerous solo and group exhibitions including Feature Inc., NYC; the American University Museum, Washington DC, Miles McEnery Gallery, NYC, Derek Eller Gallery, NYC; Mrs. Gallery, Maspeth, NY, CMCA, Rockland, ME, Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis, MO and Rhona Hoffman Gallery, Chicago, IL. She is the recipient of the Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship; three Pollock-Krasner Awards; the Rutsch Award, the Hassam, Speicher, Betts and Symons Purchase Funds through the American Academy of Arts and Letters, a NYFA award, the Marie Walsh Sharpe Art Foundation Space Grant and the Elizabeth Foundation Award. Her work is included in the collections of the Baltimore Museum of Art, Clifford Chance, Daum Museum of Contemporary Art, Des Moines Art Center, Deutsche Bank, SEI/West Family Collection, and the Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College. Miller lives and works in Brooklyn, NY.

Mary Jo Vath (b. 1956, Chicago, IL) received a BFA from Stephen F. Austin State University and an MFA from the School of The Art Institute of Chicago. For the past twenty years she has split her time between Oaxaca, Mexico and New York City, but now resides full time in NYC. She has an extensive exhibition record including many one-person shows in NYC galleries: The Flatiron Project Space, Heskin Contemporary, Winston Wachter Fine Art, Edward Thorp Gallery and PPOW Gallery. Vath has received numerous prestigious awards such as: a Guggenheim Fellowship in Painting in 2013, a Yaddo Fellowship in 1989 and a MacDowell Colony Fellowship in 1987. Her work is included in The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis, MN, The Brooklyn Museum of Art, The Zimmerli Art Museum at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, NJ, and The Johnson Art Museum at Cornell University, Ithaca, NY. Vath teaches painting at the School of Visual Arts in NYC.