This exhibition focuses on how two Midwestern figurative painters, Ellen Holtzblatt and Shane-Jahi Jackson, memorialize and document those they hold dear without idealizing portraits. Like the renowned portraitist Alice Neel, they are unafraid to reveal the ambivalence, conflicts, tenderness, and joy of the institution of family. Transfixed by a desire to represent the inner contours of their subjects, the painters use the act of painting in different ways as a jumping-off point to explore the rawness of their relationship with the sitters. Each painting is an unveiling of truths, disappointments, depictions of the unsaid, and the thorny topic of unconditional love within families.
Holtzblatt’s paintings of family members offer up glimpses of deep love, fault lines, and storied relationships while Shane-Jahi seeks to honor the intimacy that exists within African American families despite all the sociological studies that continue to document the demise of the Black family. His use of the Orb, a major motif in his paintings, speaks to ancestral voices speaking across generations.
Shane-Jahi Jackson is a self-taught visual artist, born in Denver, Colorado who currently resides in Morris, Illinois. He is a multi-talented painter, luthier, and musician. Jackson’s paintings serve as an act of bearing witness to the lives, strengths, and fragilities of family and friends. Recent exhibitions include the Reva and David Logan Art Center at the University of Chicago with Voices through Orbs, the Black Couch Gallery, Exibit Fine Art Center, and the Ottawa Art League.
Ellen Holtzblatt’s art explores the profound connections between the physical and spiritual world – the memories of the body that reside in the soul. Landscape becomes an allegory for psyche, emotion, and decay. Through her portrait and landscape paintings and drawings, she seeks to embody the power and vulnerability of mind and body, and the ever-present passage of time. Holtzblatt exhibits her work internationally and nationally. Recent one and two-person exhibits include Miller Art Museum, St. Xavier University, Chicago Cultural Center, Prairie State College, Gallery Studio Oh, Josef Glimer Gallery, Fermilab Gallery, and Robert F. DeCaprio Art Gallery. Recent group shows include the Freeport Art Museum, Jerusalem Biennale, Evanston Art Center, Museum of Biblical Art, Spertus Institute, Rockford Art Museum, Chicago Artists Coalition, and the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art.
American portraitist Alice Neel (1900-1984) is most known for her portraits of mothers, friends, sons, grandchildren, and neighbors of her energetic New York City world. She is known for painting her sitters as she sees them and not often how they viewed themselves. Alice’s portraits were brazenly unapologetic representations of people she cared for deeply and a visual excavation into the interiority of their personhood and their complex inner lives.
