Nancy Hoffman Gallery will present an exhibition of paintings by artist Jody Guralnick from February 1 through March 16, 2024. This will be her first exhibition with Nancy Hoffman Gallery. The exhibition will include approximately 15 works, made between 2022 and the present. Works in the exhibition range from 12 x12 inches up to 60 x 144 inches.    

The paintings depict the winding patterns that lichen forms on rocks, as well as the branching hyphal patterns of fungal growth. The lichen, painted in acrylic in rich and alluring impasto, stands in bas-relief against an oil background evocative of nature’s palette.    

Guralnick says: “As muses go, yeast, mold, mushrooms, and lichen have a lot to offer. When fungus grows, it casts these lacy mycelial threads. It’s so baroque and over the top.” Guralnick paints these ornate, “over the top” alluring patterns in her latest series.    

Guralnick moved to Aspen, Colorado in the mid 80’s after nine years in New York where she was intrigued by the detritus of the City: cigarette packs, paper scraps, litter, etc. When she moved to Aspen, she realized “the woods have a different type of litter.” Thus began her lifelong fascination with and commitment to nature as well as scientific studies. The microscopic universes she discovered at her feet became fodder for dissection and categorizing. The intricate patterns and ecosystems invited close examination. The ephemeral nature of nature itself, its cycle of growth, deterioration and rebirth became a metaphor for life and its fragility in the artist’s hands.    

She is a Master Naturalist specializing in lichen with the Forest Conservancy in Aspen. Her Conservancy studies inform and inspire her new paintings, which look closely at complex networks, symbiotic relationships and processes that occur throughout nature, which she transforms into beguiling abstract paintings that appear to suggest another universe.    

Her studio is brim-full of lichen, mushrooms, bits she finds on the slopes as she hikes trails; along with paintings that spring from these natural treasures. While the paintings are not portraits of her collections from the ground, what she sees and studies is the springboard for the works on canvas.    

Guralnick says about her work:    

“I believe the future is vegetal, as well as fungal. The great life forms that are the building blocks of our planet will, I hope, flourish and keep regenerating and inhabiting the earth.    

“I strive to speak some of the myriad languages around me, the language of Algae and Fungi, the language of the earliest living things on this earth, the great creators and decomposers of our planet, hidden in plain sight, sending up these beautiful structures, loaded with spores, ready to repopulate.    

“My role is to observe, to study, to wonder, and then make large and visible these building blocks that help to shape this world. We can’t protect what we haven’t noticed – we ignore all this at our peril.    

“I speak in paint about networks, roots, the spreading systems of information that are mycelium, and open them up to the naked eye. I’m struck over and over by the repetition of form and pattern at every scale, from a lightning strike to our own vascular system, they mimic the dendritic patterns of these enormous organisms of connection.    

“Mutualistic symbiosis, the ability of organisms of different species to cooperate for their mutual good, is the signature of life on this planet. Thank of the life that you can’t see with the naked eye as well as the visible, and feel its power to propel the future.”    

About the Artist Jody Guralnick was born January 16, 1953 in Boston, Mass. She currently lives and works in Aspen, Colorado. After study at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, she received her BA from St. Martin’s School of Art, London in 1975, and her MFA from Pratt Institute in 1978. She has had numerous residencies, among them at the American Academy in Rome, and in New York at the Bio Art Residency, School of Visual Arts Bio Lab. She is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Grant, a Visual Arts Fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts, and the American Academy in Rome Visiting Artist Fellowship. She has had numerous exhibitions at various galleries in Aspen, Colorado and has been shown in many museum exhibitions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Aspen Art Museum, Aspen; The Denver Botanic Gardens, Denver; The Hudson River Museum, Riverdale, NY; and the National Art Museum of China, Beijing.