LUMINOSITY

Elise Morris, Carol Lefkowitz, and Audra Weaser

SLATE contemporary | 473 25th Street, Oakland, CA

April 21—June 11, 2016

SLATE contemporary is pleased to present Luminosity, featuring new paintings by Elise Morris, Carol Lefkowitz, and Audra Weaser.. A fitting welcome to spring, Luminosity showcases three artists’ attempts to capture the elusive element of light in nature — an largely intangible sensory experience — through the medium of paint. The result is a survey of paintings that appear as though they are glowing from within, each with their own mysterious light source.

Through color, composition, and abstraction, the artists of Luminosity seek new, innovative avenues to tackle light and landscape. For many years, Carol Lefkowitz has dedicated her practice to an exploration of chaos and structure through a strict palette dictated by sky, sun, and leaves. Within the firm parameters she has set for herself, her inquiry is marked by striking depth. Elise Morris seeks to capture fleeting, “magic moments” in nature through her paintings, which she builds up slowly and purposefully from pencil sketches on her canvas to rich acrylic grounds to numerous thin, translucent layers of oil paint that shimmer and shine. Audra Weaser shares the concern of building her compositions through many layers, but she also erases or “excavates” her paintings to create abstract landscapes by selectively sanding away her mixed media acrylic layers. The results echo misty forests, wet bayous, or light shining through gathering weather.

Though each artist has forged her own distinct path and investigation, they clearly share a common concern with capturing and translating the bewitching, etherial light that nature offers us of when we take the time to look.