The Paintings of Resa Blackman

The Christopher Brodigan Gallery spring show features the work of Boston-area artist Resa Blatman. Blatman has been teaching at the Massachusetts College of Art since 1997 and has shown her work in scores of shows. As her artist’s statement explains, by playing with the contradictions of emptiness versus fullness, lush versus barren, and rapture versus displeasure, Blatman attempts to show nature at odds with itself. Inspired by Baroque, Romantic, and Victorian decorative art, as well as by botanical imagery, her compositions create a visual feast of fruit, flora, wildlife, and pattern. She takes these elements out of their context and gives them a surreal landscape or contemporary stage.
 

Through their decorative qualities, Blatman's paintings also deal with themes of excess and beauty. These ornamental, invasive patterns creep into the fecund environments of the birds and bats—sometimes overtaking, even strangling the animals—and, along with the ominous berry, create a picture of sensuality mixed with undertones of wanting and dismay.
 

Blatman’s paintings and prints are in private collections throughout the United States, and in Italy, England, Switzerland, and South Africa. She is also a lending artist to the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Fourteen of her paintings currently are on loan to the museum’s corporate members throughout New England.

Blatman’s work will be on exhibit at the Christopher Brodigan Gallery from April 1 through May 10, 2009.