Free Verse Paradise Cha Cha - Gabe Brown and Josette Urso

Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to announce a new exhibition featuring new paintings by Gabe Brown and Josette Urso.

Through her painting, Gabe Brown searches for meaning in the unknown. Exploring a world beyond tangible reality, Brown sees herself as part of a larger, richer universe. A universe that expands further through a conscious effort to embrace the meaning of that which she creates in her own personal life, as well as the experiences generated by the lives of those around her.

Brown says, “Art is like magic, an illusion created by the force of humanity”. Using a visual vocabulary derived from a world that often goes unnoticed, everyday events such as conversations between birds, forces that drive water, or the cellular structure of plant life, she begins to reinvent reality.

The paintings aim to create a secret recipe for an inner landscape of the human condition, narrative vignettes that are both alluring and mysterious. Nature and those elements existing in its microcosm become metaphors for a strange and at times super reality, a parallel universe that questions the natural scheme of life itself.

Gabe Brown’s work has been exhibited widely through the United Sates and is in many notable collections including The Gund Collection, New York, NY, Saks Fifth Avenue, New York, NY, Time Warner Cable, New York, NY, University Art Museum, University at Albany, Albany NY, Capital One Corporation, Fidelity, and Bank of America. She has been awarded fellowships at Studio Residency Grant, Women’s Studio Workshop, Rosendale, NY, Saltonstall Foundation, Ithaca, NY, New York Foundation for the Arts, and others. Gabe Brown earned her MFA at University of California, Davis, CA and a BFA from The Cooper Union, New York, NY. The artist lives and works in the Hudson Valley (New York state) and is an Adjunct Professor at Fordham University, Bronx, NY.

Teetering between urban and natural subjects, Josette Urso makes exploratory paintings working directly and urgently in response to her immediate environment. Urso’s approach involves “moment-to-moment” extrapolation governed by intuitive leaps of scale, color, and wayward geometry. In her paintings contrasts and cross-fertilizations unfold and are cumulative, non-linear, free flowing and interpretive. Space becomes an ambiguous and malleable substance and the artist delights in its manipulation as she meanders acrobatically in a kind of gymnasium of convoluted mark making and image collision. For Urso, painting parallels the act of seeing and is the most direct link to private time with the physical world. Urso’s work becomes a record of exploration and reflects her inherent energy and reason for living.

Urso’s work has been exhibited widely including in the United States, Costa Rica, Germany, and Cambodia. Urso has been honored with many grants and residencies including Ballinglen Arts Foundation, County Mayo, Ireland, Soaring Gardens, The Ora and Lerman Charitable Trust, Laceyville, PA, Loft Nota Bene, Cadaqués, Spain, AIR 3, Ruhpolding, Germany, Ucross Foundation, Clearmont, Wyoming, Adolph and Esther Gottlieb Foundation, Inc., New York, NY, Art and History Museums of Maitland - Research Studio, Maitland, FL, Yaddo, The Alma B.C. Schapiro Residency, Saratoga Springs, NY, Artist in Residence & Project Director, Mural & Workshop Site: Mary & Martha House, Ruskin, FL, The Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Inc., New York, NY (2007-2008). Urso earned an MFA, and a BFA from University of South Florida, Tampa, FL. The artist lives and works in Brooklyn, NY

Please contact Kenise Barnes, Kenise@kbfa.com with inquires or to arrange a preview of the exhibition.