Josette Urso, To The Moon And Back, April 2020, watercolor, ink crayon, paper collage and metro card, 13 x 13 inches

"Kokoku was one of the first songs I heard when I first came across Laurie Anderson in the 1980s. I was in graduate school in Tampa and listened to Mr Heartbreak literally over and over again. My admiration for her work has only grown with time and by coincidence, hers was the first cd I reached for when I realized it was time to start rationing my news intake during this frightening time. So, now, so many years later, I am again listening to Laurie Anderson literally over and over again in my studio."

-Josette Urso, 2020
www.josetteurso.com

Don Lewallen, Colors of Time, 2019, Colored pencil on paper, 20 x 14 inches

”I make sense of the world through my drawings: dissecting, changing, reorganizing. The shapes in my work may appear non-referential, but there is a lingering sense of the familiar. I gather images from many subjects and sources that interest me (newspapers, art, nature, science and math). I then begin to draw with colored pencils, to articulate and relate the seemingly random, chaotic parts into an enigmatic known. Things never are what they are, once expressed, compressed or altered. The shifting, the recombining, the changes in the spatial relationships invite a new perception—a re-interpretation of the mediated world.

As I move through the world, I collect shapes, making quick line drawings of the ones that excite me. In my studio, I start with a single shape, adding color and texture until it feels alive. I add more one at a time, creating a set of compositional relationships that articulate a unified field of vision. I use color, proximity, and position with a variety of marks (smooth gradation, controlled line, rough-edged) to create and resolve disparities. Soon this careful process of building gives way, and the world that is gradually being revealed takes on a life of its own.”

-Don Lewallen, 2020
www.donlewallen.com