Atlantic Works Gallery (AWG) September exhibition will be Studio #213, paintings by Jeff Briggs and Katie Kimbrell. This presentation opens Saturday, September 6th, with a reception from 5-8 p.m. and closes Saturday, September 27th.  There will also be an AWG traditional “Third Thursday” reception on September 18^th from 6-8 p.m.

March 13, 2020. Katie and Jeff have a show to hang at the Hynes Convention Center. What a day. Things are getting weird on the news, but people are still going to work while feeling anxious. We get the paintings dropped off and arrange the hanging with the curator, Stephanie Dvareckas. By the time we return the rented van, the entire city is in lockdown, and the show is open to no one.

Studio #213 is the first two-person show for us since then.

Jeff and Katie have shared a painting studio at Atlantic Works in East Boston for 15 years, which has enriched their artistic practices. There, they bring distinct proclivities for similar overarching artistic interests, painting their internal worlds and the imposition of landscape on abstraction.

What they gravitate to within these broad interests is reflected in their lives outside the studio. Jeff is a nature lover and a musician. In paintings, he accordingly melds land, sound, and seascapes through intervallic color and rhythmic mark making, creating a visual noise that can be analogous to the harmonic overtones of an instrument or timbre of a space. Katie became a neuroscientist (PhD) in search of how the unseen, abstract, cellular worlds she once painted could be understood. She has since come to appreciate that discovery (in all forms) relies heavily on change and now finds herself drawn to paint signaling imagery from her immediate environment.

Such differences in approach to painting are readily seen even when Jeff and Kaite are painting from similar jumping off points. Currently, they are producing work based partly on the human devastation of or in landscapes. This overlapping subject matter does not account much for the visual comradery between their work. The core of this relationship is easy to sense, but awkward to put in words. The most accurate explanation may be that they have a continuous source of small inspirations from each other. This intimate dialogue promotes otherwise unlikely moments about color, Jeff’s tough pinks in Sextet, or content, Katie’s embrace of natural beauty in her new paintings. Such cross pollination has resulted in very different bodies of work that resonate together.

Image 1 (main image): Katie Kimbrell, Countdown to, 60 x 48 inches, Oil on Canvas
Image 2: Jeff Briggs, Sextet, 28 x 32 inches, 2024, Oil on canvas