Resa Blatman
opening reception Friday, November 1, 5-7pm
Informed by a rich history of painting from the Netherlandish, Baroque, Hudson River School, and Abstract Expressionism to contemporary artmaking processes, and imagery found online, my work also calls on poetry, science, and nature for its inspiration. Using nuanced mark-making, I make paintings, drawings, and mixed-media installations about the shifting climate that is unpredictable, yet captivating and beautiful. Beauty is a key ingredient in my toolbox, and I blend it with my reverence for the natural world to compose works that are both contrary and compelling. Humanity’s role in the rapidly changing environment adds vulnerability and a tinge of despair to the mixture of painterly beauty — turbulent, roiling skies hint at an unsettled world while soft, ethereal clouds or mounds of tiny moss appear monumental, peculiar, and strangely comforting. Themes of death, rebirth, unknowing, mournfulness, and joy reside here alongside gratitude, compassion, and love for the Earth and each other.
About Resa
Resa Blatman is a Somerville-based visual artist working with varying media including installations, paintings, and drawings that speak to her love for the natural world. Her solo exhibition, “Little Green” was initially showcased at Merrimack College’s McCoy Art Gallery (September – November 2024) in Andover, Mass, and is moving to the Multicultural Arts Center in Cambridge, at the end of November. Her water 3D water installation is currently featured in a group exhibition “Nurture: Empathy for the Earth,” and presented as part of the academic conference “Thinking About Climate Change: Art, Science, and Imagination in the 21st Century” at UMass Boston, where she was a participating panelist. Three of her paintings were recently featured at the Peabody Essex Museum’s exhibition “Bats!” in Salem, Massachusetts (2023-2024). In spring 2024, she was awarded a “Great Marsh Artist” Fellowship via the Manship AiR in Gloucester, Mass to create a body of work representing the marsh’s beauty and importance, and in March 2024, she completed a yearlong artist-in-residence at Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Mass, where she began her body of moss paintings. Her art installations reside in several public locations including Denver Health, Colorado; Texas A&M University; City of Hope Lennar Foundation Cancer Center, Orange County, California; Boston Children’s Hospital; Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Massachusetts, etc. Resa’s work is in collections throughout the U.S., including the Museum of Arts and Sciences, Georgia; Twitter; Fidelity; Hilton Hotel; The WH Ming Hotel, China, etc. She exhibits her work nationally.
