Billis/Williams Gallery is pleased to present Judy Nimtz: Of marble and muse, the gallery’s second solo exhibition of the artist’s work. The exhibition features Nimtz’s most recent series of figurative oil paintings and continues through November 8th.

Judy Nimtz is exploring the play between the human form, the natural landscape, and the built environment in these paintings. With this work, Nimtz veers from strict naturalism toward the poetic. The surroundings become frames for the figures, edges soften and disappear, and transparent passages emphasize the ethereal quality of the paintings. The flesh palette is purposefully high-key and desaturated giving the figures a marble-like sense of solidity.

In a moment in the folly, the figure is seated precariously on a carved stone. A pair of boots wait in the foreground. There is a hint of landscape beyond and a sense of the looming columns and roof of the folly. As with many of the paintings, the viewer is catching the subject unaware. And yet the highly choreographed body positions belie that seeming unawareness. The subject is very cognizant of the viewer - and performing in some way. We’ve stumbled upon a ballet in the forest or a Greek tragedy being staged in a garden. The highly stylized and intentionally posed body positions of the figures are playful and full of whimsy. There is a vulnerability conveyed in the color palette and diaphanous leaves and textiles. The landscape becomes a stage set - a grounding for the subject of unknown story being told.

In this work, Judy Nimtz is taking the long tradition of painting women in the landscape and turning it into something new. Instead of staid poses, Nimtz’s figures contort and invert and play. The paintings are about the human form but also about angle and line. They are portraits while simultaneously not being about an individual. There is a languid quality to the motion - a softness to the stone and foliage and a marble quality to the bodies. We are transported into the magical world of Nimtz’s imagination - filled with the experiences she has gathered from life and literature, from places visited and places dreamt of. Her paintings are the distillation of light and shadow and form and narrative.