Joanne Mattera: "Vico & Swipe"
"My paintings are succulent in color and reductive in composition. Repetition provides an underlying structure for much of my work. Vico is a new series, begun in 2021. Worked in oil stick and oil pastel on prepared handmade paper, these small works ask to be grouped together in small or large aggregations. The series is related conceptually to Swipe. There is no underlying narrative here, just a love of material, color, and process." - Joanne Mattera, 2024
click to enlarge grid
Joanne Mattera - Vico series on gallery wall, 12 x 9.5 inches each, $1,400 each
click images below to enlarge
Joanne Mattera, "Vico 56," 2025,
oil stick and oil pastel on handmade paper,
12 x 9.5 inches, $1,400, floated in a maple wood frame
Joanne Mattera - Vico series framed and installed in private collection
Joanne Mattera - Vico series on gallery wall, 12 x 9.5 inches each, $1,400 each
click images below to enlarge
Joanne Mattera, "Vico 50,"
2024, oil stick and oil pastel on handmade paper,
18 x 12", $2,000
Joanne Mattera, "Vico 51,"
2024, oil stick and oil pastel on handmade paper,
18 x 12", $2,000
Joanne Mattera, "Vico 49,"
2024, oil stick and oil pastel on handmade paper,
18 x 12", $2,000
"Swipe...Being accustomed to fast-drying mediums such as encaustic and gouache, I was surprised to find myself drawn to oil for this series, but the schmear of oil yields a surface like no other...and half-dry oil paint invites incursions. What I love about the medium is that as I scribed into it, the displaced paint built up in tiny globs along the skived ridges. The resulting surface is a texture not unlike that of Silk Road, my long-running series of encaustic on panel, but smaller and softer. I began Swipe around 2015 and have continued it intermittently since then." - Joanne Mattera, 2024
Joanne Mattera, "Swipe 16," 2020,
oil on Fabriano 300-lb. hotpress, 30 x 22", $3,000
Joanne Mattera, "Swipe 10," 2020,
oil on Fabriano 300-lb. hotpress, 30 x 22", $3,000
Joanne Mattera, "Swipe 15," 2020,
oil on Fabriano 300-lb. hotpress, 30 x 22", $3,000
Joanne Mattera, "Swipe 18," 2020,
oil on Fabriano 300-lb. hotpress, 30 x 22", $3,000
Joanne Mattera, "Swipe 8," 2020,
oil on Fabriano 300-lb. hotpress, 22 x 30", $3,000
ARTIST STATEMENT
“I titled this series Silk Road not only because of the fabric-like shimmer, but because of the way my ideas about the interaction of color and surface travel from painting to painting, a long road of chromatic and textural expression. I would be lying if I said that the natural world didn’t creep into my visual thinking. The morning sky, light on water, sun and shadow, and the crepuscular horizon surely tinge the chromatic consciousness of a painter, even one who is committed to reductive abstraction. Nevertheless, I remain resolute in the idea that the paintings in this exhibition are formal explorations of color, field after field of non-objective thought expressed in paint." - Joanne Mattera
Joanne Mattera reviewed in the press:
Joanne Mattera at Arden Gallery:
"Sheer, luminous, living, wafting color."
—Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe, December 4, 2020
"Joanne Mattera’s monochromes exude luscious indulgence.”
—Daniel Kany, Maine Sunday Telegram, December 29, 2013
"Appreciating (Joanne Mattera's) "Silk Road" solely on the basis of its tour-de-force technical achievement would be to miss the richer sphere that the work inhabits. Each painting contains the inherent mystique invoked by the series, which is to say, each piece promises a journey full of visual delights without a specific roadmap. Color on the scale of intimacy that Mattera achieves is a powerful experience.”
—Liz Hager, Venetian Red, February 2010
“Over the years Joanne Mattera has gradually reduced the imagery in her work to finally arrive at this celebration of color and surface.”
—Joseph Walentini, Abstract Art on Line, May 17, 2007
“Joanne Mattera is one of the acknowledged American authorities working in encaustic.”
—Philip Isaacson, Maine Sunday Telegram, Feb. 18, 2007
Joanne Mattera at Arden Gallery:
“Mattera revels in the medium’s stained-glass-like luminosity. She’s a colorist whose principal concern is how tones interact and play off one another . . . Throughout, there’s a sense that light is powering these works.”
—Cate McQuaid, The Boston Globe, December 10, 2004