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TEMPO

AN ANIMATED LIFE

THE PAINTINGS OF GAIL NATHAN

August 20 - October 2, 2004

Opening Reception: Thursday, August 19, 6-8 PM

Bronx, NY - On a late summer evening, Thursday the 19th of August, The Bronx River Art Center (BRAC) will present a selection of work from the past three decades of Painter Gail Nathan. Nathan has been the Executive Director of BRAC for over five years and this is the first time the BRAC community will have a chance to see a survey of this accomplished artist who wears the "Director's hat" by day. The work will remain on display through October 2nd and will be the backdrop for a series of events kicking off the Center's upcoming 20th anniversary.

A native Bronxite, Nathan began wandering beyond the Borough in her teen years to attend school at Fierillo La Guardia High School of Music and Art, study dance in Manhattan's theatre district and to work nights in Off Broadway Theatre in Greenwich Village. After graduating college she settled in the Soho Arts community but in the mid 70s Nathan returned to work in the Bronx at the then fledgling Bronx Museum of the Arts. After leaving the Museum for an artist residency in the South of France she returned to produce two murals in the South Bronx. But her taste for travel was yet to be satisfied and in 1980 she began to travel around the country (and later the world) as a visiting professor of Painting.

Throughout nearly 20 years of travel Nathan continued to paint at a pace that matched her travel itinerary, producing major solo exhibitions throughout the mid Atlantic, southeast and west coast regions of the United States. By 1999, when she finally returned to New York and took over the -more- helm at the Bronx River Art Center, she had gained a world of experience as an artist, educator and arts administrator. BRAC's need for an Executive Director at that time seemed perfectly matched with Nathan's experiences. Since January 1999 Nathan has dedicated herself to reinvesting in the organization's original mission to educate and build a sense of stewardship in community residents for the organization's name sake - The Bronx River.

But Nathan remains a painter at heart and continues to evolve her creative vision as well as run the Art Center. The works selected for this exhibition represents more that 30 years of art making in which her style shifts back and forth between abstraction and figurative painting, while her aesthetic vocabulary remains consistent, exploring an animated space accented by optical color relationships and alternately angular and organic lines. Ranging from mural sized oils and acrylics on canvas, to hundreds of drawings and watercolors produced through an "automatic" flow of imagination, Nathan's work reflects a life of travel and worldly experiences.

After a flooding problem in a Virginia storage facility where Nathan left most of her work, she brought all of it to New York to rescue the paintings and drawings from any further damage. While working to conserve the artwork she thought this would be a good time to share her work with the community she has served for the past five years. "August and early September are usually our dark months, when we have the longest break between semesters of our classes. And yet it's an important time to remain open for the community - to have something to explore and enjoy in the neighborhood during the last few weeks of summer. I thought it would be great to have a show of my work so that everyone who has gotten to know me over the years would finally see the whole picture of me as an artist, as well as the lady in the front office".

BRAC also plans a Board Development reception during the run of the show to kick off a new Capital Campaign for the planned restoration of their 100 year old building; and will end the exhibition with a closing event on September 30th in conjunction with a special Bronx River Trolley Night when the BOEDC's Culture Trolley will make the rounds of the central Bronx River organizations from Hunts Point to West Farms Square.