Kenny Harris and Judy Nimtz
Painting Partners
November 1 – 30, 2022
Opening Reception on Thursday, November 3 from 6-9pm

http://www.georgebillis.com/nyc.html

Judy Nimtz and Kenny Harris are an artist couple based in Venice Beach, working in different styles of representational painting.  Judy and Kenny share a life of art and travel, having separate studios at home where they work and discuss the craft.  They rarely exhibit together, so this is a unique opportunity to see their work hung side by side.  Each is showing at least one painting of their partner: Judy showing a moody image of Kenny inspired by Caspar David Friedrich, and Kenny showing larger works of Judy in interiors from their travels.  Kenny doesn’t exhibit figurative work often, and when he does it is usually an image of Judy caught in a moment of contemplation.

In her figure paintings Judy veers from strict naturalism toward the poetic, emphasizing lost edges and transparent passages. Her flesh palette is purposefully high-key and desaturated giving the figures a marble-like sense of solidity while also conveying the ethereal.  Part of this collection is based on the bodies of dancers moving through space.  The other part of the show are images from a recent painting trip to Ireland where the megalithic sites and the vast landscape of West Cork embody the evocative imagery she seeks in her work.

Kenny Harris’ work portrays the light and mood of intimate spaces and still lifes from his travels.  He is fascinated with subtle light effects and expressive painterly surfaces, focusing on interiors.  His dynamic paint application describes the way light pours through a space, with scrapes and impasto embodying the texture of the surfaces depicted. Many of the new interiors for this body of work are from a trip to Amsterdam earlier this year. A canal house of a collector with eclectic décor was the inspiration for a few of the new works.  Harris has been traveling and painting for many years, and this body of work is a continuation of this interest in spaces—grand or mundane—that capture his eye for light and texture.

An Article Kenny wrote on being an artist couple:
https://realismtoday.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/4/in5-archives/issue-15183/7-two-artists-one-roof-by-kenny-harris.html