Katie Pretti: A Dive into Abstraction

by Roy Bernardi and Jennifer Leskiw

In the contemporary art scene, few artists encapsulate the complexities of human experience as effectively as Canadian artist Katie Pretti. Born in 1980, she graduated with honours from the Ontario College of Art and Design in 2004 and obtained her Masters in Contemporary Art History in 2023. She is currently based in downtown Toronto, Ontario. Her creations may be regarded as entirely non-objective abstraction infused with conceivable figurative elements. Her artwork challenges viewers to engage in a dialogue between the recognizable and the abstract.

Katie Pretti sitting in her studio with a powerful work currently still in production behind her
Katie Pretti sitting in her studio with a powerful work currently still in production behind her
Katie Pretti sitting in her studio with a powerful work currently still in production behind her
Katie Pretti sitting in her studio with a powerful work currently still in production behind her

Pretti’s art often creates a nuanced interplay where the figure is obscured or rendered in such a way that it becomes part of the surrounding abstraction. In some works, the forms are distinctly recognizable, while in others, they dissolve into a tapestry of colour and texture, demanding the observer to ponder the relationship between representation and abstraction. This duality not only showcases her versatility as an artist but also reflects the complexity of human perception.

Katie Pretti; The 4th Pathway No 4, 2012, 47” x 47”, acrylic, oil stick, oil pastel, and graphite on canvas. Private Collection
Katie Pretti; The 4th Pathway No 4, 2012, 47” x 47”, acrylic, oil stick, oil pastel, and graphite on canvas. Private Collection

Through her art, Pretti invites us to explore the boundaries of abstraction and figurative representation. Each stroke and hue is deliberate, inviting the viewer to engage with the emotional resonance behind the images. Her unique approach encourages a deeper understanding of not only the figures portrayed but also the layers of meaning that lie beneath the surface. As her style evolves, the boundaries of abstraction are challenged.  

Katie Pretti remains a pivotal figure in the art community, inspiring both admiration and contemplation among art lovers and critics alike. Her work is a testament to the power of art to evoke thought and reflection, transcending the simple act of viewing to become an immersive experience. Pretti’s contributions to the art world are not merely aesthetic; they are profound explorations of the human condition presented through a lens of abstract interpretation. As her career unfolds, followers of her work can anticipate the limitless potential of her creative journey.  

Katie Pretti; Vanitas No. 10, 2010, 88" x 75” oil stick, watercolour, pastel, graphite on canvas. Collection of Darren Saumur
Katie Pretti; Vanitas No. 10, 2010, 88″ x 75” oil stick, watercolour, pastel, graphite on canvas. Collection of Darren Saumur

Pretti’s new works are a series of 12 pieces loosely based on the Vanitas trope, which is a theme from northern European paintings of the Baroque period. This theme is a reminder of life’s fragility, the transient nature of youth, and the inevitability of death. Also, most specifically, it’s a condemnation of vain pursuits. (The addition of which distinguishes this theme from the closely related memento mori paintings of the same era.) Traditionally conveyed through the depiction of a realistic still life, a Vanitas painting features an arrangement of objects which each illustrate an aspect of the moral. For instance, a skull is used to symbolize death; a burning candle, bubble, or hourglass signifies transience; decaying fruit or flowers represent decay; mirrors reference vanity.

This theme holds additional importance for Pretti. It represents a return to a collection of Vanitas themed paintings she created in 2010, which was a crucial series in her career. It was designed as a series of 10 pieces to work together similarly to Claude Monet’s Waterlilies, allowing viewers to observe the transition of light from day to night in the backgrounds of the compositions, which essentially featured figures set within landscapes. Vanitas No. 10 features “imagined figures contorting within a foreboding landscape during the transition from day to night… these imagined abstracted figures are attempting, in vain, to resist the arrival of darkness. The onset of darkness is inevitable”. This piece, from Pretti’s initial Vanitas series, serves as inspiration for the current work.  

When Pretti first approached the Vanitas theme in 2010, the entire notion of death’s inevitability was merely an abstract idea to her; she could only intellectualize it. However, after experiencing her own encounter with death, her perception of the theme of Vanities transformed. This led her to truly grasp the sensation of fragility. That experience profoundly motivated Pretti to apply to the Ontario Arts Council to explore the Vanities theme once more. Now, 15 years later, equipped with a genuine understanding of the fear of death, she is reassessing her interpretation of Vanitas, but this time with a darker and bolder perspective. She is not particularly inclined to include a “beautiful” landscape element in her work this time. In her own words, “I am really leaning into colour and playing with composition and, of course, abstracted figures to create imagery that will express slight discomfort, maybe some anxiety, and certainly moments of fear. That’s not to say that this is gonna be a completely unpalatable, dark, unapproachable body of work. Some panels are going to present as bright and some as dark, but all will be dynamic compositions using bold colour. And the pallet does shift incrementally over the panels creating a cyclic sense to the series.” Pretti is trying to translate a narrative into abstract elements that ask the viewer to use their intuition to interpret. This would define her general method of abstraction, indeed. You imagine that you are observing a figure, yet you understand it is not a representation of a figure.

Katie Pretti; Daemons No. 3, 2016, 54" x 68” Acrylic, oil stick, oil pastel and graphite, on canvas. Collection of Jeanette Preis
Katie Pretti; Daemons No. 3, 2016, 54″ x 68” Acrylic, oil stick, oil pastel and graphite, on canvas. Collection of Jeanette Preis

Some of her work could be considered non-objective abstraction while some could be considered figurative abstraction. According to Pretti, Daemons No. 3 could be interpreted as one’s inner demons being so persistent that they’ve materialized into reality, like the daemon figure is emerging from a dark realm, pushing forward in space, toward the viewer, toward reality … it’s a scary painting lol.

Katie Pretti; Corpus Hypercubus, 2017, 52” x 42”, acrylic, oil stick, oil pastel, and graphite on canvas. Collection of Jenni Bernardi
Katie Pretti; Corpus Hypercubus, 2017, 52” x 42”, acrylic, oil stick, oil pastel, and graphite on canvas. Collection of Jenni Bernardi
Katie Pretti; Mudang, 2016, 54” x 65”, acrylic, oil stick, oil pastel, and graphite on canvas. Private Collection
Katie Pretti; Mudang, 2016, 54” x 65”, acrylic, oil stick, oil pastel, and graphite on canvas. Private Collection

Corpus Hypercubus and Mudang paintings were obtained directly from the artist’s studio during a private visit. They exemplify what Pretti describes as “in-between” works that “are hugely informative of future work.” Corpus Hypercubus distinctly displays elements of both landscape and figure, and, most significantly, it showcases media and colour experimentation that appear in later works. The term mudang, a female shaman who communicates with the supernatural through dance rituals, resulted in the creation of the Mudang painting. The stripes of colour in the black ground foreshadow key pieces Pretti has exhibited since. 

Katie Pretti; Beside Myself 1, 2024, 58” x 54”, acrylic, oil stick, oil pastel, and graphite on canvas. Collection of the artist
Katie Pretti; Beside Myself 1, 2024, 58” x 54”, acrylic, oil stick, oil pastel, and graphite on canvas. Collection of the artist

Beside Myself 1 is a current abstract expressionist painting. The expression ‘beside myself’ can be understood as a complex, multi-faceted, and evolving imagery, literally merging into one another. Additionally, it may convey feelings of intense frustration and exasperation, or evoke a sense of gut-wrenching dread or regret.

Pretti’s artistic endeavours are most aptly likened to those of British artist Cecily Brown (1969-), as both artists deconstruct the form of the human image, merging it into abstraction. However, the artists from whom Pretti draws inspiration include Edvard Munch (1863-1944) (especially his woodcuts), classical old masters such as Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696-1770) and Henry Fuseli (1741-1825), as well as the Abstract Expressionists Mark Rothko (1903-1970), Robert Motherwell (1915-1991), and Willem de Kooning (1904-1997)… 

Pretti currently has work on view at The Modern, Toronto – Niagara Inaugural group exhibition (230 Niagara Street, Toronto) on view now through to January 2026 alongside works by Ben Woolfitt, Francoise Sullivan, Mark Roth, Andre Fauteux, Cora Cluett, Judy Singer, William Griffiths and Sandy Van Iderstine. 

Pretti has held studios in Los Angeles, Buenos Aires, and Brooklyn, and has been artist in residence at COME (Buenos Aires), Ctrllab (Montreal), The White House (Toronto), and Spark Box Studios (Picton, Ontario). Her book of drawings, Sonority of Words, was launched in Toronto by Art Metropole. It was featured at the 2007 NYC Art Book Fair, and added to the Artists Books Library at the National Gallery of Canada. Pretti has also been profiled in Carte Blanche Volume 2: Painting, ArtSync, ArtSlant, Magenta Magazine Online, Elle Canada, Fashion Magazine, Canadian House and Home, and Inside Entertainment, among others.

Dressvanximo: Resolving the Violence of Life through Sincerity and Honesty

by Chunbum Park

Installation View of Dressvanximo’s “The Stranger” Solo Exhibition
Installation View of Dressvanximo’s “The Stranger” Solo Exhibition

Dressvanximo’s solo exhibition titled, “The Stranger,” at Gallery Wave in NYC is a psychological thriller and surrealistic experience. The Korean artist takes the violence of our encounter with the strangers in the streets and re-packages it as the dream-like landscapes and portraits, which speak of the journeys and encounters from life itself, universally-speaking. Featuring 7 paintings of striking colors and mentality that deal with the uncanny and the relationship between the known and the unknown, the exhibition is a mini survey of the artist’s prolific output. 

Born in 1992 in South Korea, Dressvanximo has studied and pursued art for all his life. However, commercial success has been slow for the artist, whose incompatibility with the South Korean market owes to the fact that the artist paints with honesty and style that is aggressively formulated or violently suggestive at times. The collectors in South Korea usually gravitate towards pretty pictures of flowers and calm, meditative landscapes more than Dressvanximo’s straightforward images of skulls, for example, which would imply the rather depressing subject matter of human weakness and mortality. 

Dressvanximo, Deus Ex Machina, 45.9 × 35.8 in, various materials, 2025
Dressvanximo, Deus Ex Machina, 2025, various materials, 45.9 × 35.8 inches

The most striking painting at the exhibition is “Deus Ex Machina” (2025), which is a psychological landscape? The image depicts a simultaneously crystal or lava-like formation juxtaposed to a black, triangular abstract shape and surrounded by a flowing topology with hairlike grooving and a sky with floral cloud patterns. A bit Giorgio De Chirico-esque (in terms of visual style) and a little bit like Salvador Dali (in terms of the content), the painting is the encounter between the familiar and the unknown, between the deja vu and the uncanny, and between the known self and the other (or the stranger). Who is at the core, and who lies outside at the periphery? It is hard to say. 

The contradiction of visual language is laid out there for everyone to question and experience: the very act of defining the features of the orange formation (which is either geological or psychological in nature) limits it to just that, preventing us from associating it with anything else; however, the black triangular form is ambiguously formed and abstracted to the extreme (like a question mark) so that we can place ourselves in the black shape’s perspective or position. While, at first, the black shape appears as the unknown other, we slowly find out that the black shape is in fact ourselves and our subjecthood… The external world is already pre-defined, but our subjecthood is ongoing as an undefined operation and open to all possibilities enacted by our free will. Furthermore, it is the object that reflects the most light that is darkest inside, and the black shape is filled with light internally. If light is the symbolic or metaphorical device for the knowable and the self, then the black triangle is the self while appearing as the stranger, and the orange shape is the other, even as it tries to masquerade as the familiar self.

Dressvanximo, Silence, 2025, various materials, 46.0 × 28.6 inches
Dressvanximo, Silence, 2025, various materials, 46.0 × 28.6 inches

On the other hand, Dressvanximo’s painting with the highest level of depth and finish is “Silence” (2025), which again features the black triangular shape at the horizon, which is beneath the silhouette of the cliffs and the waterfall falling below. What is the artist trying to say with this landscape painting? If the landscape could be understood as a metaphor for identity formation, it appears to speak of the relationship between the self and the other. The encounter between the self and the other could be marked by psychological scars, but what is even more violent is the encounter between the self and the self. Self in relation to self is the most dangerous and risky because it requires greater honesty, strength, and integrity, to not sugarcoat one’s shortcomings as strengths or to mistake one’s honesty as a weakness. Brushing off one’s own failures in the form of self-praising propaganda invites more blunders, failures, and hurt in the future, so the healthy formation of a strong identity requires a high degree of honesty, rationality, and good intent. 

It could be argued that the black color of the abstract geometric shape, which serves as a marker for the self in relation to the external world, assumes a secondary metaphorical purpose. It would be to illustrate the artist’s own frustrations and qualms with the South Korean society and art world, which has been messed up inside and out by money and power (like all capitalistic societies, including the US). Has the market hijacked the virtuous language of art to generate value with value, allowing for a cyclical feedback loop with influencers promoting their mediocre children for a great sum of money, and blind critics praising “art” corrupted with money and notoriety like automatons? The artist believes so.

The figures are equally compelling works, which include a portrait of a Korean boy surrounded by lions (“A Black Bird Covered the World” (2024)) and a painting of a girl based on a a historical photograph from the Korean War (“Innate Goodness, Innate Evil” (2024).

In the case of the boy, we observe the great anger and hatred for both the other and the self, which stem from the great violence of chasm of difference in power. The boy is completely helpless against the lions, so the situation requires greater strength from the boy to acknowledge the weakness of the self… greater than the combined sum of the powers of all the lions in the scene. Indeed, yin and the yang are intertwined, and the sheep assumes the role of the lion, while the tiger is in fact the rabbit, underneath the mask of the predators’ faces. The boy, in the moment of acknowledging the defeat of the self, perishes with great pain and psychological damage as he is eaten by the lions as food and a piece of meat. Yet, in the same instance, the boy garners enough power to not only survive the destruction of the ego but also protect it with an unbreakable shield (of wisdom and love). 

In the case of the girl from the Korean War, she is somehow reminiscent of the comfort women who were taken into sexual slavery during the Japanese occupation of Korea. This is just as “The Scream” (1893) by Munch somehow magically foretold the self-destruction and the subsequent nihilism of Europe (and the world) during the greater wars that followed in the 20th century. 

Dressvanximo, Innate Goodness, Innate Evil, 2024, various materials, 35.8 × 28.6 inches
Dressvanximo, Innate Goodness, Innate Evil, 2024, various materials, 35.8 × 28.6 inches

As the artist points out, her left eye and her right eye are slanted in different angles, which is suggestive of good and evil in the same face. This is a great, earnest study of the self that acknowledges both the capacity for good and evil, and the light and the darkness of the self. The self’s future is not predetermined, due to the unpredictable nature of free will and quantum physics, but the image of the self can be summed up as an archetype of a fox or a lion (or a wolf or a tiger). The core of the self is quintessentially a tendency or a force (like acceleration) that generates a particular trajectory over a series of events or circumstances. 

The discussion between the self and the other and the self and the self provides a new way of understanding the difference between and the nature of good and evil. What is good? What is evil? What is the self and the other in relation to these concepts or values? 

How do we try to use propaganda and linguistic tricks to repackage our own mistakes as good and others’ trials as failures? What is the true nature of the self that wants to be a tiger and a king, even if this requires the expense of others, who are relegated to a lesser role?

Buddha prior to his divine state of enlightenment was Siddhartha Gautama, and he escaped the palace although he was a prince because he wanted to solve the suffering of all of mankind. Jesus Christ also asked his disciples to give up material wealth and to follow only him and his spiritual word. This is exactly the opposite of most people who are materially concerned and worship money and power. The difference between good and evil, between tiger and fox, and between the king and the subject… lies in the nature or the character of the core of being and existence.

What we learn from Dressvanximo’s works and self investigation is that the king is not king, power is not power, truth is not true, and the self is not the self that we think we know. Furthermore, the distinction between the self and the other is much less than the difference of understanding and repackaging the self as self… between the self and the self. 

What we finally understand is the virtuous must master the art of the lie, while the conmen must understand the principles of truth. Power is the art of letting go of power, and the yin and the yang of the cosmos brings us to a full circle from a position of weakness to strength and back to weakness in ever-fluctuating changes of paradigms. The Nazis of the European theater and the Japanese soldiers in the Asia-Pacific during World War II are not so “evil” or different from the less evil others who may fantasize violent pornography or follow the orders of a fascist dictator-wannabe on a morning in January. Evil is not necessarily purely evil, and good is not entirely good. Purity of thought is not healthy or feasible. Justice is not a pure concept. It is not so straight-forward.

Dressvanximo, A Black Bird Covered the World, 2024, various materials, 35.8 × 28.6 inches
Dressvanximo, A Black Bird Covered the World, 2024, various materials, 35.8 × 28.6 inches

Yet, the arrow of justice is there. It points to a direction of what is good based on the  sum of all events and situations. It is a human concept and intuition.

Within the complexity of the world, which is exacerbated with the rise of AI, fake news, and fascism, artists like Dressvanximo demand greater honesty, sincerity, and engagement with the world. Who are we? Where do we come from? What are we capable of? Are we the good guys or the bad? What is human nature?

It is a human who could hurt another human and then contemplate the nature of this wrongdoing in relation to the self. The human speaks from the heart a tormented scream, just like Munch’s iconic painting… a life lived and decisions made demands transparency, strength, and integrity because we are human, and it is human nature to seek the arrow of justice and love, wherever it might be headed.

“Fingindo ou Fingimento (Pretending)”

by D. Dominick Lombardi

Braço Perna 44 in Lisbon and Atelier Ghostbirds in Caldas da Rainha, Portugal, D. Dominick Lombardi, curator

The online Oxford Dictionary defines pretending in this way: “speak and act so as to make it appear that something is the case when in fact it is not.” Most of us can still remember playing as a child; dressing, behaving, claiming to be something we were not but hoped to be one day. Some of those pretend characters were the classic princess, an adventurous astronaut or explorer, a ballet dancer, a sneaky spy, or simply a person that operates a car, boat, train or plane. What is common with artists, is that childhood pretend playing often occurred with aspects of drawing, painting or just simply creating in an imagined world that was funneled through the images and installations produced by the pretenders.

(top) Braco Perna 44, Lisbon, Portugal, (bottom) Atelier Ghostbirds, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal
(top) Braco Perna 44, Lisbon, Portugal, (bottom) Atelier Ghostbirds, Caldas da Rainha, Portugal

As a child, I clearly remember drawing crazy looking fish on paper, cutting them out and playing with them on the floor as if I was immersed in an underwater world. Luís Almeida remembers making drawings where he would represent what it was like living in an underground world where there were traps, bugs and warring soldiers. He also remembers making drawings of tall buildings with a childhood friend, where the windows would show what was going on inside each floor. When Run Jiang was a child in kindergarten, she remembers drawing a picture of a couple all dressed up and getting married. Soon, other children gathered around asking her to draw one for them, all pretending to be all grown up and getting married. Izumi Ueda Yuu remembers her home in Japan, where there was a window between the living room and the hallway that had many wooden slats. Ueda Yuu used those slats as shelves to display her found treasures: pieces of glass with rounded corners that she picked up on the street, scrap metal, some rusty and some still shiny, dried flowers, seeds, especially large camellia seeds, souvenir wrapping paper, and whirring oil paper as she made installations of those precious things every day in her little private gallery.

As adults, that ability to move into an alternative place that is under control solely by the creator, that form of pretending, is still very much alive in the work of the four artists in the exhibition: Izumi Ueda Yuu, Luís Almeida, Run Jiang and myself.

(Left) Izumi Ueda Yuu, Dreamboat (2024), painting, gouache and collage, 53 x 39 cm, (Right) Izumi Ueda Yuu, River, 2022, Mixed media painting, drawing, Sumi painting, water color, shibori, collage and oil stick, 154x118cm
(Left) Izumi Ueda Yuu, Dreamboat (2024), painting, gouache and collage, 53 x 39 cm, (Right) Izumi Ueda Yuu, River, 2022, Mixed media painting, drawing, Sumi painting, water color, shibori, collage and oil stick, 154 x 118 cm

The art of Izumi Ueda Yuu relates very much to Symbolism in the way it conjures up dreamy narratives through pure, poetic, potent iconography. Everything, every belief, emotion, realization is boiled down to its essence, waiting to re-emerge in the mind and thoughts of the viewer. Once the conversation begins between the art and the viewer, the mysterious spiritual aspect of the art comes forward. The artist’s imagined, created place of make believe is one built of memory, childhood dreams, things that sometimes happen in the periphery that later become central and Ueda Yuu’s art lives in that space where the mind transcends the matter.

(left) Luís Almeida, Pool Johnny (2025), oil on canvas, 200 x 175 cm, (right) Luís Almeida, Crazy Movement (2023), pastel and charcoal on paper, 150 x 140 cm
(left) Luís Almeida, Pool Johnny (2025), oil on canvas, 200 x 175 cm, (right) Luís Almeida, Crazy Movement (2023), pastel and charcoal on paper, 150 x 140 cm

Luís Almeida’s art goes back and forth between fantastical, heroic imagined worlds to a brutal form of representation. His ability to reveal a mystical imagining overrun with narratives to the simple truth of the absurd or benign aspects of the everyday, all with an element of wild humor is the core of Almeida’s art. A brilliant draftsman and a provider of unadulterated color theory, this artist is still very much connected to that inner child that once ruled all his thoughts. The message here is: “There is no art without total freedom of thought and expression.” A mental state that hinges solely on his ability to leave it all out there for everyone to see.

(left) Run Jiang, Sono (2022), ink marker and watercolor on paper, 32 x 24 cm, (right) Run Jiang, Mixed Dream 3 (2022), charcoal pencil and collage on paper, 73 x 110 cm
(left) Run Jiang, Sono (2022), ink marker and watercolor on paper, 32 x 24 cm, (right) Run Jiang, Mixed Dream 3 (2022), charcoal pencil and collage on paper, 73 x 110 cm

Run Jiang’s art is a perfect blend of being and pretending. Jiang’s more colorful works focus on the waking dream state, when one’s thoughts are completely unrelated to one’s physical place. In this instance, Jiang puts forth her own unique way of portraying the multi-planar reality theory whereby previously unseen worlds collide. In her black and white ink drawings which she notes as a Dream series, Jiang brings together lifelong experiences, both real and imagined, into a precious series of vignettes and vistas that can at one moment seem bucolic and the next imperiling.

(left) D. Dominick Lombardi, CCWSI 189 (2025), acrylic, oil, canvas, 60.3 x 45 cm, (right) D. Dominick Lombardi, CCWSI 192 (2025), oil, acrylic medium, magazine page, museum board, 125.4 x 19 cm
(left) D. Dominick Lombardi, CCWSI 189 (2025), acrylic, oil, canvas, 60.3 x 45 cm, (right) D. Dominick Lombardi, CCWSI 192 (2025), oil, acrylic medium, magazine page, museum board, 125.4 x 19 cm

In my paintings, I am repurposing the thousands of small drawings I made when most of the world was sheltered in place. For an artist, this state of being sheltered and alone is not so unusual. In fact we crave it. However, the danger that lurked just outside the studio door and windows in the time of the worst COVID days was very imposing. Studying, mining and resolving a few of the numerous, relatively automatic drawings I made back then, recreating them into oil on repurposed canvases or on 1960’s and 70’s printed materials gives me the chance to return back to a time when I pretended everything, one day soon, was going to be okay.

The exhibition “Fingindo ou Fingimento (Pretending),” which will include the work of Izumi Ueda Yuu, Luís Almeida, Run Jiang and myself (D. Dominick Lombardi), will be held at two compelling venues. The first will open on October 30, 2025 at Braço Perna 44 in Lisbon. Run by João Fernandes, Braço Perna 44 is one of the more charming spaces in town, where they always present some of the most visually stimulating, intimate and intriguing art in the capital city of Portugal. Luís Almeida and Run Jiang are represented there. The second venue opens on November 7, 2025 at Atelier Ghostbirds, which is run by Mika Aono. Located in Caldas da Rainha, Atelier Ghostbirds is a formidable and central institution in an area where there are many artists living and working. In addition to eye opening and fun exhibitions, the gallery also offers printmaking workshops and art related events.

Maya Perry: Wanting to Get Out of Bed and Run Like a Wolf

by Chunbum Park

Installation view of Maya Perry’s “The Moon Takes Shape of an Outsider's Light” at RAINRAIN
Installation view of Maya Perry’s The Moon Takes Shape of an Outsider’s Light at RAINRAIN

Maya Perry’s solo exhibition at RAINRAIN, “The Moon Takes Shape of an Outsider’s Light,” is a transformation and trans-configuration of the artist’s hidden psyche as her animal spirit, the brave wolf. The show engages the viewers as if they are reading a story book with pictures. The pictures are carefully put together in a lyrical fashion, as if the artist thought about the choice of words (or imagery) for an extended period of time. The images never fully furnish the audience with straight-forward answers.

Is Perry a brave wolf? Are we brave as wolves, or are we timid and submissive like dogs? The works in the show throw the question out there – whether both the audience and the artist have the guts and the strength to take on the role of vulnerability that exploring the question fully entails.

What is the distinction between a wolf and a dog? How can the artist provide markers identifying the differences between the untamed voice of the wild and the domesticated pet?

Maya Perry - “The rhythm of the heart that runs” (2025)
Watercolor on paper, child's bed, 24.5 x 53 x 29.5 in (62.23 x 134.62 x 74.93 cm)
Maya Perry – The rhythm of the heart that runs (2025), watercolor on paper, child’s bed, 24.5 x 53 x 29.5 inches (62.23 x 134.62 x 74.93 cm)

Looking at works such as, “The rhythm of the heart that runs” (2025), we see the artist begin the inquiry from the reclining position of weakness, on the bed. The sculptural installation piece consists of a wooden crib for babies with a running wolf and a dead pigeon juxtaposed with one over the other, flanked by large paper cutouts representing moths (or perhaps butterflies).

This central motif of the bed is an important part of the artist’s conversation with the self and the world. Feeling weakness and defeat, perhaps in the studio, the artist becomes contained in bed. While lying down, the artist becomes a dreamer who hopes to run in the wild triumphantly and freely like the wolves.

The decision… to become a wolf or a dog… is akin to the same set of decisions made on the picture plane of the canvas with a brush and paint. What makes a painting truly brave? What leads to a successful painting without compromises and driven by tenacity? What makes a strong painter?

Without masquerading as the wolf, Perry becomes the wolf… by the pure act of throwing the question out there for everyone to see and observe. What is a predator? What is prey?

The two are inextricably intertwined because the predator pretends to be the superior part of the equation in relation to the prey, but, to be the predator, one must become the prey by acknowledging the weaknesses.

The yin and yang of the universe are interconnected and cannot be separated from one another. Without the shadow, there is no light. And dark colors absorb more light internally, while bright colors absorb less light.

The artist narrates her journey of growth and transformation while in bed and dreaming of the other possibilities.

The difference between a wolf and a dog is akin to the question of what is authentic painting and what is illustrational in opposition to painting.

Or rather, the artist questions this hierarchy that believes painting to be superior to illustration, and asks if she is the dog and not the brave wolf because her painting style is semi-illustrational in nature.

In this moment, the power relations flip, and the artist reverses the superiority of painting into a more egalitarian philosophy in which painting sits as one of many different modes of expression. Perhaps the belief that we all had placed in painting was misguided. What is painting? What is illustration? And why must they be in opposition to one another? Within this world view, Perry’s painting is reborn as a hybrid style that borrows from both modern painting and contemporary illustrational styles and motifs.

Maya Perry - Out in the distance there is a howl that breaks all doors (2025), watercolor on paper, 58 x 48 inches (147.3 x 121.9 cm)
Maya Perry – Out in the distance there is a howl that breaks all doors (2025), watercolor on paper, 58 x 48 inches (147.3 x 121.9 cm)

When we take observance of works such as “Out in the distance there is a howl that breaks all doors” (2025), we cannot be so sure if the depiction of a wolf can be considered traditional painting or illustration. Most likely, this question is moot and outdated, since artists are required to push the boundaries for their field, similar to scientists or engineers. Why must we think in the same way and expect the same results, fixing ourselves to preconceived notions? In this work, the illustrational need or desire to push the colors and forms into greater definition, away from an ambiguous state (which permits greater depths for open interpretation), is repeatedly interrupted. Perry instead breaks up the high level of detail and “perfection” with a touch of painterly strokes and colors. It is as if pop culture entered the vocabulary of fine art through pop art. It is as if matters of illustration and animation entered the collective psyche of the world, so that it would no longer make sense to produce paintings purely in the traditional sense… to capture the essence of the subject. Perhaps the surface is the subject, and the core was not as important as we had thought it was. Or perhaps the core can be contained within the surface. Perhaps.

Perry’s painting does not sit entirely on the surface. While appearing to be essentially illustrational at first glance, her work involves all the nuances of a painterly painting. The looseness of the strokes and the act of letting go (of control) in order to gain another voice (possibly a deeper grasp of the unknown or thought arising from ambiguity and abstraction) all point to Perry’s strong background in painting. Perry’s work is hybrid in nature, so it is difficult to call it purely one thing or the other.

Maya Perry - “The hybrid between a wolf, dog and human” (2025)
Watercolor on paper and oil on glass, stop-motion animation, 3 min 4 sec
Maya Perry – The hybrid between a wolf, dog and human (2025)
Watercolor on paper and oil on glass, stop-motion animation, 3 min 4 sec

In Perry’s “The hybrid between a wolf, dog and human” (2025), which is a stop-motion animation utilizing oil paint and watercolor, we see the final logic of Perry’s train of thought and visual exploration. A painting that moves. A painting that changes in sequence over time. A painting with many layers that can be experienced as a moving memory and not a frozen fragment of it, frozen in time.

Perry becomes the underdog in order to become the wolf in the end. Here we are reminded of a song by Cloud Cult, “No Hell,” which goes, “I saw your soul without the skin attached, and you’ve got the guts of a coyote pack.”

Painting is a continual struggle with the self. To be or not to be, that is the question. To be the wolf, to be a strong painter, requires honesty with one’s own vulnerability, sensitivity, and imperfections. Power, excellence, and success on the canvas are not so straightforward. To gain power, one must let go of power. To be excellent, one must struggle. To succeed, one must exercise the right to fail. To be a strong painter, one must be aware of one’s own weaknesses.

Perry’s painting is informed by a hybrid language that excavates deeper meaning from the surface, like enjoying cakes dug from the peel of an orange, but imagine that the peel has all the savory juice and nutrients (and the seed is inedible). This is the trans-configuration of painting, which applies painterly language to its forms based on an ultra modern, illustrational style and motif, without becoming purely an illustration.

This is the fine line that Perry chooses to walk in order to push the boundaries of the field, and this is the line that makes or breaks Perry’s painting, each a battle that she will engage with to grow and get stronger. This line is a place of new birth (as a young wolf) between what has been considered a dog and an old wolf, between illustration and old modes of painting.

Maya Perry: The Moon Takes Shape of an Outsider’s Light, September 3—October 11, 2025 at RAINRAIN, 110 Lafayette Street, Suite 201, New York NY 10013

Joe Diggs: All the Riches

by Seph Rodney

What first strikes me about the paintings of Joe Diggs is the overabundance of ideas. The phrase that comes to my mind is “an embarrassment of riches.” It’s worth asking why I might be embarrassed. Perhaps because the exquisite struggle that his paintings produce in me is that to properly to take them in, I feel I have to find a place in myself to put all this extravagant grandeur. Wandering with him through his studio and then later through his website, I realize I am too small. There isn’t room enough in my heart’s house to carry all this profligate thought and perception. I’ve never felt so limited encountering an artist’s work. At his studio in Cape Cod, Massachusetts I spend hours looking and marveling at the cardboard dividers from Chinese takeout food he’s used to depict whole planetary systems cycling towards and away from their entropic doom, paper shopping bags, splayed open and painted with acrylic on each side so that each reads like pages in a massive book — flip them forward and back and enter a dream of the endless. There are also small to medium-size canvases he’s used wood trimmed by hand to frame relentlessly inventive abstract worlds, no two quite the same. Eventually, I tell him I have to stop looking. I’ve run out of bandwidth. Later, peering at the photographs I took that day, I ask myself how Diggs’s imagination became so large, a conduit for so much.

Joe Diggs, Race Relations, 2015, 36 x 20.5 inches
Joe Diggs, Race Relations, 2015, 36 x 20.5 inches

I turn to the rudimentary inventory for insight: Joseph Vincent Diggs, born of Deborah Ann Jackson, makes portraiture. Some of these works seem more concerned with documenting a certain cultural moment and saying something about how we typically see each other, such as the “Baller” series, for example “Baller Red Black & Green” (2017) which contains an x-ray of some unknown person’s lungs and a black and white photograph of a baseball summer league player, “Mr. Jones.” The work, collaged onto a plywood rectangle, suggests that our view of the figure is typically superficial, not delving like the radiograph into a body’s hidden infrastructure. Through his paintings, Diggs dives into the social and psychic plumbing of the place and people he knows. For instance, a gentle portrait of his father, Sargeant first class George Ralph Diggs in “Race Relations” (2015) depicts the elder Diggs, who began his military career in the Army as an infantryman and later became a drill sergeant and a recruiter. The actual pin his dad wore, “Diggs Race Relations”, is affixed to the painting, while the father gazes out with a resigned expression. The portrait is about more than his father; it captures a moment in the historical development of our collective understanding of and experience with race, somewhere north of “colored” and “negro,” but south of “African American” when Black people were still considered fundamentally alien to the popular idea of “American.” Diggs never entirely forgets this history and his position as a Black man in it, but at times, he leaves this aside to touch other tender places in himself.

Joe Diggs, I Dare You, 2025, oil on canvas, 50 x 60 inches
Joe Diggs, I Dare You, 2025, oil on canvas, 50 x 60 inches

Diggs’ portrait of his older brother, Craig Wayne Diggs, “I Dare You “holding two sections of watermelon, one in each hand, and wearing red swim trunks and sandals with a white shirt over his shoulders. He may be weighing the slices, deciding which one to devour and which to share. This is the person who initially spurred Diggs to get into art. As he attests:
I started making art, really, in high school. My brother was working on trying to be an artist, and he’s three years older than me. He was my idol, so I just followed him around. I did everything he did. I didn’t have any personality. So, I just hung out … I’m a middle child, so, you know, little issues there.

Then, at a certain point in high school, Diggs begins to acknowledge (with the help of several teachers) that something in him was good and unique, and competition with his brother showed him the way: I was trying to beat my brother on because, you know, he just whooped my ass on everything. So, it was like, I got to beat you with something, and I just wanted to be better than him. Craig Diggs died in a car collision at 19, and then the artist became unmoored for a time. But the place he had come to in that striving with his brother gave him a sense of himself that would not fade or falter.

oe Diggs, Cove at Michas, 2022, 48 x 60, oil on canvas
Joe Diggs, Cove at Michas, 2022, 48 x 60, oil on canvas

Joe Diggs makes landscapes. Consider “Cove at Micha’s,” (2022) with a brooding dark corner of the lake contending with the mystery of the mushy background of green forest, while in the middle-distance tree limbs cavort with lighter green swirls and dashes as if the place is not wholly natural, not entirely imaginative but a collaboration between the painter and the perceived world. An oil on linen piece “Untitled” from 2019 is more mysterious, in a primarily black and white landscape with water and bare winter trees visible, there are also masses of shrouded bodies that seem like black, white and golden ghosts, settled on the periphery of the water, waiting for their chance to make themselves more fully known.

Yes. At some point, these unsettled phantoms were representative of Joe Diggs, and then later, not, when he grasped that he had much to process growing up in a military family and coming of age in a hybrid neighborhood where oligarchs live alongside people from Cape Verde along with other Black people. Part of his story is also spending 15 years of his working life as a flight attendant. All the contrasts and inklings of worlds he’s inhabited and worlds just glimpsed come out in his paintings.

The abstract paintings are marvels — every one. It’s difficult to describe what he’s doing in these paintings because that never stops changing. I see an extended family of art historical ancestors that, though related, never read as produced by a mentor-pupil relationship. I see Hundertwasser, and Jack Whitten, Frank Bowling and Gerhard Richter. I see Helen Frankenthaler and Minor White. He tells me that he refused to pay attention to Ernie Barnes, Jean Michel Basquiat, and John Biggers because he felt their influence would be too heavy on him. Time has ratified his choice to stay within himself; he is a painter who can, at will, change his game. “Brown Paper Bag Series No. 1” (2024) shows his facility using a colorful grid to overlay a scene of organic, tubular growth meeting a cityscape containing places of habitation. Yet as I describe one painting, I know I’ve only described one planet within an entire system of swirling galaxies with undying suns, moons, and stars.

Joe Diggs, Being Boys Experience #9, 2021, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 in
Joe Diggs, Being Boys, Experience #9, 2021, oil on canvas, 8 x 10 inches

Diggs has also made work for a “Boys Being Boys” project in which he was teaching painting to incarcerated youth in a Division of Youth Services Detention Center Program at Nickerson State Park in Brewster, MA, from 2015 to 2024. Additionally, he created Project 23 with Rick and Linda Sharp to locate and document people who had been part of a Headstart program in Providence, Rhode Island, in the 1970s.

Joe Diggs, Independence Day on the Vineyard, 2015, acrylic and oil on canvas, 60 X 50
Joe Diggs, Independence Day on the Vineyard, 2015, acrylic and oil on canvas, 60 X 50 inches

All these concerns and stylistic variants come together in his history paintings. A powerful example is “Independence Day on the Vineyard” (2015). The painting documents a visit to Martha’s Vineyard on the Independence Day holiday. The overall color scheme of red, white, and blue marks the image as one that contends with America’s past. As he tells me, Diggs and a friend, Dino Smith, brought Smith’s grandson to the Vineyard to see where African-Americans could first buy homes in the community. They sunbathed and rubbed the clay they found in the ground on their skins instead of sunblock. The boy is partly hidden, protected by the older men from the gruesome aspects of the nation’s history, including what are meant to be chalk outlined parts of James Byrd Jr’s body, indicated on the right quadrant of the canvas. Byrd Jr. was dragged to death along a three-mile stretch of asphalt road in Jasper, Texas, in 1998, chained by his ankles to a pickup truck driven by three men, two of whom were avowed white supremacists. Here we can see the combination of portraiture, a small glimpse of landscape, the abstraction that’s meant to allude to records of a murder, and that lush blend of colors that make it seem as if the entire composition had emerged from a fever dream.

Diggs says that one of the questions he asks himself is whether the thing he’s created is surreal or sublime. This sounds like his way of asking whether he is placing an overlay on a lived experience (thus creating a surreal thing, literally upon the real), or crafting an experience that abandons the everyday, travels to a place where the viewer has left earthly substance behind, as when ice sublimes away into vapor. His painting is about both motions, toward and away, always plucking at my hands, always testing and probing, seeing how much more I can hold.

Joe Diggs : Evolving Circles at the Provincetown Art Association and Museum (PAAM) through September 7, 2025.
Joe Diggs: Worlds Just Glimpsed at Berta Walker Gallery, Provincetown, MA through August 7, 2025