For her solo exhibition There, From Here, Joan Vennum introduces her latest series of oils, which explores spatial environments. Vennum is a New York-based artist who creates luminous, color-flooded paintings that are at once abstract and figurative. She is known for her dreamlike canvases covered with thin layers of repeated brushstrokes. Composed of broad fields of color, the paintings portray space as it appears both in her imagination and the natural world.
In her earliest explorations of light and space, Vennum painted subtle gradations of color forming veil-like surfaces. Maintaining this premise, she then continued to compose fields of color by layering paint but introduced a more vivid palette, influenced by travels in India. Those lushly painted works were composed of concentrated vermilions, saffron yellows, and indigos. Her most recent canvases continue to combine vibrant color and ethereal brush work.
Vennum has roots in the post-abstract expressionist camp of female painters such as Lee Krasner and Joan Mitchell. She has exhibited widely in the United States and Sweden. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, New York; The Power Collection of Contemporary Art, Sydney, Australia; the Konstmuseet, Uttersberg, Sweden; the Skandia Försäkringsbolag, Stockholm; and the Museo Civico, Taverna, Italy.
