黑料不打烊

In her eighth Robischon Gallery solo exhibition, Karen Kitchel鈥檚 dedication to her beloved series of grassland paintings abides an ever-expanding embrace of her chosen subject. Her signature works observe and examine the deep expanses of plant species, geography, and time. The concept, which began in 1997 to consider non-romanticized landscape views, continues today with enduring success. The intricate collection of native and invasive plants breaks with stubborn artistic traditions of grandeur but the artist鈥檚 cropped, sharply focused images on canvas and panel embody the seductive physicality of the paint itself while rejecting conventions of the horizon line, panoramas, grandiose scale, or a lofty "god's eye" view.

For 鈥淧alindrome,鈥� Kitchel entwines the verbal concept of something reading the same backwards or forward with her well-recognized, highly disciplined painting language. The high-colored, mirrored image, paired paintings of Double Arch, Double Flow and Double Casitas use a hand-painted 鈥渞eflection鈥� image with a recognized resonance to the idea of a palindrome. Curiously, Kitchel鈥檚 rebellion against the convention of a horizon line is turned on its head with the space between the mirrored images becoming, for her, a sort of vertical horizon line which runs counter to the traditional, organizational custom, and repositions the viewer deeply into her lavishly rendered images. With this approach, Kitchel subverts the standard landscape viewing position that banishes the viewer to a distant and removed viewing location.