Included are portraits such as the etching, “Self Portrait at the Table” by Käthe Kollwitz, depicting herself momentarily looking up from her work to gaze directly at the viewer. In “Woman Resting Her Head on Her Hands,” Titina Maselli’s pen and ink drawing takes up the entire picture plane, making a powerful portrait with patterning and strong textural blocks.
Alice Neel’s “Mother and Child” is a self-portrait holding her daughter; a bittersweet painting remembering Neel’s one-year-old child that died. Neel paints the park they are visiting with a bleak background in the dead of winter; two bare trees frame the figures seated on a park bench. Neel posed the mother holding the child in a way that is reminiscent of historical depictions of the virgin and child.
Game Changer, Susan Copich Decay and mortality in America s Rust Belt, child labor, women depicting women, and the intersection of rigid graphics and lyrical line work in this month s round-up of Hudson Valley art exhibits.
Susan Copich at Windham Fine Arts Set in Youngstown, Ohio, Copich s latest work, then he forgot my name, is a self-portrait photography series examining decay and mortality in America s Rust Belt. The series emerged over three years while Copich shuttled between her hometown in Ohio and upstate New York, and spending time with her father, who was battling dementia. Using a rundown family-owned building in downtown Youngstown as a backdrop, she set out researching the structure s history and re-imagining past occupants. Copich s photography illuminates a psychological landscape through the pain of living, the continuum of decay, and the struggle for change while reflecting on the collective awakening of female