SELF: PORTRAITS + PLACES
BRENDA GOODMAN
JULIE HEFFERNAN ELISA JENSEN
SELF: PORTRAITS + PLACES
BRENDA GOODMAN • JULIE HEFFERNAN • ELISA JENSEN
CURATED BY:
MELINDA STICKNEY-GIBSON
EXHIBITION AT:
WOODSTOCK BYRDCLIFFE GUILD | KLEINERT/JAMES CENTER FOR THE ARTS | WOODSTOCK, NY
How do women see themselves when they are set free from the male gaze? One place to find the answer is to look at the self-portraits of women artists. These works often exhibit a freedom from social expectations and an interiority that defies the conventions of traditional portraiture.
SELF: portraits + places presents the works of three women artists whose work plumbs the depths of female subjectivity. Each takes a distinctive approach to self exposure, but they share an aversion to self-flattery or deception. Instead they invite us into their rich and often unsettling interior worlds.
Brenda Goodman offers an unsparing version of the old trope of the artist the studio. She presents herself surrounded by her own paintings. Her exposure here is both literal and emotional — though her face is obscured, she shows us her overweight naked body. The expressionist brushstrokes create a continuity between her own body and that of her works, suggesting that the paintings on the walls are as much, or perhaps more, a part of her essence than is her physical body. Julie Heffernan also sometimes paints herself in the nude, but here self exposure takes place in the context of fantastical environments that
owe a great deal to art historical conventions of the baroque and roccoco periods. The female figures in her works are at one with a pulsing overgrown natural world to the extent of seeming, at times, to meld with it. These wild women refuse to be tamed or objectified. Instead they exude a sensuality that celebrates the pleasures of the senses and the embrace of a free-wheeling imagination.
The paintings of Elisa Jensen are not overtly self portraits. Instead, she uses the motifs of the window and domestic interior as metaphors to suggest the experience of being inside looking out. Here the house, historically presented as the women’s sphere, stands in for the artist’s body and mind. Windows become eyes that look out on the world and we are made aware of the contrast between an interior that is both sheltering and confining and an exterior world that beckons with light, color and also perhaps danger.
Departing from the reportorial description that is often so much a part of the portrait genre, these three artists extend a bridge between their inner lives and their viewer’s own experiences. They provide a mirror for our shared fears, desires and hopes.
SELF: PORTRAITS + PLACES • ELEANOR HEARTNEY •
The concept of “self” is a very large and complex idea, one that is not easily defined or limited to a singular criteria, but fluid and the very essence of the word “individual”.
The artists chosen for this exhibition explore the notion that “self” can be represented by images of our physical selves, our personal mythologies, or the actual spaces we live in. All of us are inescapably all of those things.
• MELINDA STICKNEY-GIBSON •
SELF-PORTRAIT, IN THE STUDIO , 2004
• OIL ON PAPER, 20” X 15”
COLLECTION OF TERESA LISZKA and MARTIN WEINSTEIN
UNTITLED, 2004
• OIL ON PAPER, 7.5” X 5” COLLECTION OF TERESA LISZKA and MARTIN WEINSTEIN
JULIE HEFFERNAN
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH LACOÖN, 2022 • OIL ON CANVAS, 96” X 75”
SELF-PORTRAIT WITH ERUPTION, 2018 • OIL ON CANVAS, 68” X 55”
ELISA JENSEN
DUSK, 2022
• OIL ON WOOD PANEL, 20” X 16”
VINALHAVAN, WILDFIRE SUNSET, 2022 • OIL ON WOOD PANEL, 20” X 16”
DAWN, LIGHT IN THE STAIRWAY, 2022 • OIL ON WOOD PANEL, 20” X 16”
BROOKLYN MORNING, 2022 • OIL ON WOOD PANEL, 20” X 16”
DAWN, 7:45 AM, 2023 • OIL ON WOOD PANEL, 20” X 16”
QUIETUDE, 2022 • OIL ON WOOD PANEL, 20” X 16”
SELF: PORTRAITS + PLACES
BRENDA GOODMAN
HEFFERNAN
ELISA JENSEN
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
ENORMOUS GRATITUDE TO THE INDIVIDUALS AND GALLERIES WHO SO GENEROUSLY SUPPORTED THIS EXHIBITION.
ANONYMOUS
OSCAR BUITRAGO
LEE and GREG COCCARO-SIDER
GARY GISSLER
TERESA LISZKA and MARTIN WEINSTEIN
HIRSCHL + ADLER MODERN ; NY, NY
SIKKEMA JENKINS & CO. ; NY, NY
THE WOODSTOCK BYRDCLIFFE GUILD BOARD OF DIRECTORS
URSULA MORGAN , EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, WOODSTOCK BYRDCLIFFE GUILD
JEN DRAGON , DIRECTOR OF EXHIBITIONS, WOODSTOCK BYRDCLIFFE GUILD
PHOTO CREDIT:
JOHN KLEINHANS: BRENDA GOODMAN
LISZKA/WEINSTEIN COLLECTION IMAGES
