Judy North: A Painter’s Book of Days

I organize art exhibits each month in the Maurice Del Mue Galleries of the San Geronimo Valley Community Center. Our most recent exhibit has been a knockout. A two-room exhibit of works by Judy North.

 

Photo by Donn DeAngelo

Valley artist, Judy North, studied painting at the Otis Art Institute in Los Angeles and at the San Francisco Art Institute in San Francisco.  She taught at Bennington College in Vermont, the University of California at Davis and the San Francisco Art Academy. She's exhibited widely.

The show titled “A Painter’s Book of Days” consists of one room of works spanning many years of her career and a second room of her most recent collage work. Here’s sampling:

“There Was a Young Man”

“Madame Mustache...She Summons the Wind”

It’s a large painting. This shot gives you a better sense of scale. 

“Madame Mustache..She Lives in Her Thoughts”

“Red Rider”

“Marty”

“Bud"

Here are a few of Judy’s dog portraits:

“Nelson”

“Nelson and Freddie”

“Benni”

These collages are some of Judy’s most recent work:

“Ganesh & Sponge Bob, Removers of Obstacles"

“Serene"

“Ray Johnson”

“Just Right"

“Listen"

“Pretty Babies”

“In Full"

“Great Mother"

“Big Top”

“Chomp"

“Wednesday Sidewalk"

“Winken, Bliken and Nod"

“Jade Emperor”

“Witness"

“Winnipeg”

And here’s Judy’s artist statement:

   A PAINTERS BOOK OF DAYS

These cautionary tales, perceptions, poems, meditations, and mysteries are my way of thinking in pictures. They are snapshots of my mind. I have long been involved with a common theme. A union of opposites. Even my painting techniques are involved with it. A quote that I have had pinned to the wall in my studio for years says: "The opposite of Love is not Hate, it is the persistent use of the rational mind."

There is a table in my studio piled high with hundreds of images that I have collected over time. The sum total becomes a giant tapestry. The pictures move, they collide, they exchange energy, they build and fall back. It is a table with multiple questions and answers. A collage will surface and start to take a shape of its own, maybe a face, perhaps a story, and it will become a painting. My rational mind has learned to relax. It will recognize the rightness of the vision.

I used to think that the power of transformation would turn the lights on in the human spirit, that our consciousness would heal the past and transform the world. When the Berlin Wall came down and the Cold war ended the world seemed to be headed in that direction. We seemed to be learning that communication and negotiation were powerful ways to solve our difficulties. The information highway was created to this end. Through it all, terrible events were brewing and they began to surface again, but our leaders weren't doing their homework, Instead of facing a situation which presents profound new challenges, they preferred to retreat into past feuds and delusions, giving us Ukraine and Israel Hamas, The Trump Administration, Fundamentalism, Murder, Mayhem and WAR.

I have had a wonderful life. I have a beautiful family. I have love and stability. I have dear friends and deep relationships. I live in a beautiful place. I am very aware of all that is positive in my life and am aware of the wider world where wisdom and ignorance whirl in their frenzied dance.

And on technique: I have developed a technique to give my paintings the dimension that is pertinent to al this. I want to enrich the various sides of my visual dialog. I come from a theatre and a glass background and have long been interested in the play between transparent light and opacity, between reflective surfaces and dull mat ones, the union of opposites at work. I love complex composition, intricate pattern and color because ti embraces the chaos of life and the order I try to bring to it.

I use liquid acrylics and the various mediums that allow for different drying times that I apply with squeeze bottles to build my images like a mosaic.

The reception