Jill Nathanson: Chromatic Phrases

This exhibition presents recent work by Jill Nathanson, whose abstract paintings are shaped through a deliberate process that balances spontaneity with a predetermined structure. This interplay between intention and material response brings into focus the dynamic movement of layered color. Informed by her early study of Color Field painting of the 1960s and 1970s, Nathanson extends this lineage through a sustained exploration of color as an experiential phenomenon. In her work, color does not remain fixed or purely descriptive, but instead suggests movement as it is shaped by the interaction of light and perception. The title Chromatic Phrases draws on a musical analogy to evoke the unfolding of visual experience across the surface of each painting. Like a musical phrase, understood as a complete and expressive unit, each composition develops through relationships between colors as they are perceived over time. The viewer’s experience may shift from an immediate visual response and an intuitive sense of how to read the colors toward the gradual recognition of more subtle optical and spatial effects.