THE SEATTLE TIMES

New downtown Seattle art space and other
December 2023 art highlights

By Margo Vansynghel | Seattle Times staff reporter

“…Emily Gherard’s ethereal paintings echo with the ghosts of grief and the specter of art history. In her latest series, the Seattle-based painter and printmaker paints layers of wispy white, gossamer gray and vertiginous black on transparent fabric stretched over wooden frames in unorthodox shapes. Gherard created these in response to Käthe Kollwitz’s iconic drawing, “The Mothers” (1921-22), which depicts the grief of those left behind by the ravages of war. Gherard’s works are abstract, but their titles — like “Shrouding” or “Sister of the Artist According to Vuillard,” a reference to an 1893 painting by French artist Édouard Vuillard of his widowed mother — hint at their visual and thematic forebears. By leaving sections of the paintings’ “bones” bare and uncovered, Gherard powerfully evokes the vast hollowness of loss, a void impossible to paint over…”

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