Linhares’ powerful and expressionistic paintings depict a fantastical world populated with figures enacting ritualistic pleasures. For some time now, Linhares has pursued a genre of figurative painting that has recently become more prevalent. Her bold and assured way of painting, using vivid and unusual colors and graphic directness, show her to be an artist committed to developing a language through a mature consideration of painting’s possibilities.

Linhares’ world is one that is populated primarily by suavely lounging nymphs, cooking up midnight feasts in forest encampments, tumbling over a world of ramshackle log cabins or other such haphazard environments. Images of strange homesteads, naked girls, fires, fighting animals, and mealtimes bespeak of a primitive domesticity. At once forceful and elusive, Linhares combines a sweeping abstracted language articulated in vivid complementary hues with a potent narrative drive. Mythological references synthesize experience and interior life.

In the large gouaches Linhares shows her painting technique to similar effect. Her use of layering and deft brushwork is combined with a spontaneous, intuitive approach to articulate figure, light and space with an effortless sophistication.

Judith Linhares has shown extensively in the U.S. as well as in Europe, including ”Paradise Lost/Paradise Regained, American Visions of the New Decade” the Venice Biennale in 1984 and “Bad Painting ”1978 at the New Museum. This is her third show at the Edward Thorp Gallery.

Gallery hours are from 11am to 6pm Tuesday through Saturday. For more information please call (212) 691-6565 or email [email protected].