Janie Samuels

Location:  614 7th Ave, (btw 22nd & 23rd Sts)
Website:  janiesamuels.com
Etsy: JanieSamuels
Instagram: @janiesamuels3
Facebook: jbsamuels

I am originally from the Finger Lakes region in upstate, NY. However, my family moved to New York City when I was 10 years old—so I guess one could say I am a New Yorker.

I received my BA from Bennington College, where I majored in Lithography and Painting and my MFA from the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Additionally, I studied with Bernard Pfriem in Southern France, ultimately remaining there for two years.

I have had four solo exhibitions and over 70 group exhibitions in the United States and Southern France. I exhibit regularly at BWAC, Brooklyn, NY. 

In the early nineties, I designed and built the sets and co-produced several plays written by my husband, Evan Gubernick, for Off-Broadway and Off-Off Broadway venues. Additionally, I have had the honor of working as studio managers to both Nancy Graves and Chuck Close.

I am a member of the Arts Gowanus and Park Slope Windsor Terrace Artist Organizations. In addition to purchasing work directly from me, my work is available for sale through Martha McDonald at Brigid's Well, 109 7th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY.

The photographic gel transfer and oil on panel works are landscapes and narratives both urban and rural, an intimate portrait from everyday life. The photographs are manipulated in Photoshop, printed and transferred to panels face down, absorbed by the gel medium and the remaining paper on the surface stripped away.  The panels are then painted in oil and varnished. Each work, although derived from my photographs are unique.

 The subject for the paintings is often simultaneously political and personal, universal and intimate, inspired by political or moral concerns. The images for the paintings, although derived from the media and personal photos, are intended to resonate on a more substantive level. The composition is dictated by formal pictorial concerns. I believe, like Kandinsky, that color and form have inherent expressive qualities.  Like Matisse, I am interested in how color, pattern and form break down abstractly.  This contradiction of expressive and formal qualities is fundamental to these works. I use line to convey movement and to reaffirm the linear aspect of the image. In this way, work functions narratively and abstractly and has an intrinsic balance of form and content.