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For six years, Studio Pintura—a gallery and studio co-founded by Lois Rhomberg and Armando Gutiérrez G. in the Northrop King Building—has celebrated spring with a juried exhibition of artwork focused on florals. Until those first crocuses poke their petaled heads out from the snow, this year’s show, Floral 2023, will abundantly satisfy all yearnings for blooms with works in a variety of media by 30 artists. All the work is for sale, ranging in price point from $200 to $3,500.
Jen Nash Kochevar, founder and president of JNK Art Partners Inc., was this year’s judge. One of her winners was Andrew Sjodin’s atmospheric image of a dried bouquet in a vase. “Andrew’s work is all about composition and exquisitely reserved,” says Rhomberg. “Everything is in balance, held by a tension between what is given and what’s withheld.” Kochevar, Rhomberg adds, “loved how the blooms on the dried bouquet just barely touch the table, the delicacy of that gesture. And while the flowers have dried, they still have color, which conveys hope and a love for the beauty that remains.”
Floral 2023’s signature work—used for outreach and public relations—is Vicki Underland-Rosow’s vibrant tulip image. The artist created the large painting with dye painting on silk, then applied it to a board. Richard Kochenash’s oil painting of peonies captures all the blowsy elegance of the spring flower. The work, Rhomberg says, “shows the volume of that bloom, with the center peony closed like [a] globe.”
Other works in the exhibition were done in pastel, watercolor, gold leaf in oil paint, acrylic, and watercolor batik. Techniques vary from classical to contemporary. Other artists include Lonnie Broden, Emily Castillo, Susan Steging Cook, Colleen Cosgrove, Amy J. Coulombe, Patrick Glander, Kim Gordon, Leanne Hanson, Aisha Asim Imdad, Richard Jacobs, Charles Gilbert Kapsner, Carolyn C.S. Kleinberger, Ava Lambert, Cheryl LeClair-Sommer, Constance Misener, Sanjukta Mitra, Roger Nielsen, Mary Pow, Jeannine Pringle, Jessica Rose, Christopher Sorenson, Christine Tierney, Emily Vieth, Brenda Ward, and Sophea Woolner.
The gallery is open through April 22, Thursday-Saturday, noon to 4 p.m., and during all Northrop King Open Studio Events. “Whether you’re shopping for art or not,” Rhomberg says, “the gallery is now abloom and is a lovely room of artwork in which to spend time.”
