Silk Road 205, 2014, encaustic on panel, 18 x 18 inches
About the Work My painting is chromatically juicy and compositionally reductive. I refer to it only partly tongue in cheek as “lush minimalism.” Each painting in the ongoing Silk Road series is a small color field achieved by layers of translucent wax paint applied at right angles. The series, which I began in 2005, was inspired by the shimmery quality of iridescent silk, hence the title, but quickly evolved into more expansive explorations of color. Silk Road is the most succulent painting I have done. It is also the most reductive. In plying a richness of material against the austerity of a (very subtle) grid, I set in motion a small-scale dynamic in which more and less jostle for primacy.
Silk Road 200, 2014, encaustic on panel, 18 x 18 inches
About the Artist
Joanne Mattera has had solo shows in New York
City at the Stephen Haller Gallery (1995)
and OK Harris Works of Art (1996, 2007) and in recent years has
participated in group shows at Margaret Thatcher Projects, the Elizabeth Harris Gallery, and DM Contemporary. She shows and is represented widely. In New York State she is represented by DM
Contemporary, Manhattan, and by Kenise Barnes Fine Art, Larchmont, where her
30th career solo, The Silk Road Paintings, took place in 2015. Recent group shows abroad include 10 Ways, curated by Lorenza Sannai, which was shown at galleries in Milan, Bonn, Berlin, and Paris; and Chromatopia, curated by Louise Blyton, in Melbourne.
Mattera’s paintings and works on paper are in the collections of the New Britain Museum of American Art, Connecticut; Montclair Art Museum, New Jersey; University Collections, State University at Albany; Connecticut College Print Collection; and the U.S. State Department. Mattera writes and curates regularly. In her Joanne Mattera Art Blog she often merges both activities. Mattera divides her time between Manhattan and Massachusetts. She is a member of American Abstract Artists.
