Why Not Say It?

------------------------Why Not Say It?
March 6- April 18, 2009
Artist Reception: Friday, March 13, 6-8 PM

Electric Works is pleased to announce “Why Not Say It?” a solo exhibition by Judy North. The reception on Friday, March 13 from 6-8 PM at 130 8th Street in San Francisco is free and open to the public.

Judy North’s paintings show the practiced hand of a career’s worth of painting skill. A working artist since the 1970’s, North’s bold moves in big swaths of pure color bump up against her finely rendered imagery. North draws from the well of human mythos as she juxtaposes images from current political events against the timelessness of the desert landscapes of the spiritual quest. She is influenced by iconography ranging from nightly news broadcasts to Tibetan Buddhism to medieval Books of Hours.

North is an explorer in the search for the unity of the opposites. A certain non-saccharine mysticism inhabits North’s work, which makes it a hard oeuvre to categorize: while commenting on and pushing the bounds of the dialog in contemporary painting, North also pays homage to symbols and signs which exists outside of elevated academic confines typical of art historical rhetoric. Every work she makes has an embedded story in which the images play off of one another. North will present her work with the stories in a separate folder so that as North says in a kind of spoiler alert “let the paintings fold into you before you read the narratives.”