Dear Friends, please join me for the opening of my solo show— hope to see you there!
ETHER CREATURE
Opening: Thursday, Sept 14, 2023, 7-11pm
Greenpoint Gallery
390 McGuinness Blvd, Brooklyn, NY 11222
Press Release
Greenpoint Gallery is pleased to present ETHER CREATURE, a solo exhibition of paintings and drawings by Brooklyn-based artist Charlotte Segall. Curator Shawn James explains, “Segall’s works exist between two realms. There is the realm we know, the tangible and familiar, and then there is something else that beckons us in. We don’t quite know what this other world holds, but we sense it moving, and we are sensitized to something inter-dimensional.”
Segall’s works depict imagined people and animals interacting with mysterious forces. These invented worlds mine her training in anatomical realism, and love of 17th century approaches to illusion and action. Her paintings are built up with layers of subtle texture and color, and sometimes large aqueous splashes. Through playing with these abstract material interactions and marks, Segall creates an atmospheric matrix from which her envisioned heroes can appear. These abstract marks also become part of the pictorial narrative and can represent the other-worldly forces that drive her characters. Textures of layered paint are molded into romantic riffs that evoke a lace collar or ethereal tangles of form. Her tangled forms are a trademark that she developed by using ballpoint pen to draw the intricate curls of sheep’s wool, in a body of work where she depicted the animals flailing on their backs during shearing.
Segall explains that she is “always trying to create a sense of dramatic event. The event itself is usually not clear, but it’s clear that the people and animals involved are invested. They are eager or entranced, curious, intentional, forceful, pleasured, exhausted, in danger, transcendent, transforming, noble, abject, and usually trying or have tried their absolute best. Even abstract forms to exert the strain of their will. Each character is packed with its own hero’s journey. In this way, I offer up a life philosophy about what it feels like to pursue meaning and resonance. The ability to create impact is one definition of power— and empowerment is always being negotiated, both inside and out.”