Dec 8 Thursday, 6-8pm
547 west 27 street , suite 533, NY NY 10001

2 female artists exhibition: The Chromatic Journey
Hisako Kobayashi and Lani Kennefick

Hisako Kobayashi
Started out with the idea of painting sound and expressing feelings equivalent to those expressed by music as she aspired to pure painting made up of lines and shapes. Just as music can give pleasure and comfort to its listeners, painting, too, can evoke universal emotions and establish connections between human beings without the need for words. Powerful yet delicate, Kobayashi´s paintings reflect both her Japanese roots and her American home of choice. They are all-over canvases aiming to evoke the sublime, thus recalling American Abstract Expressionism and the work of associated artists such as Mark Tobey. The vast fields of muted color create an atmospheric space: in fact, they seem to actually depict the air filled with energy and sound, visually expressing the invisible. In Kobayashi´s work, depth is achieved by layering, and her paintings consist of many layers of paint. At times, she even has one canvas placed on top of another one, alluding to layers of coexisting feelings. Marking the space and suggesting vibrations are subtle and dynamic lines recalling Japanese calligraphy. They trace movements and bring to mind natural sounds, like the steady beating of the waves, the whisper of the wind or the murmurs of a stream. Paintings such as Synoptic Knobs, 1999, even though abstract, often evoke the elements water and air.  Overall, Kobayashi´s works succeed in drawing the viewer in by alluding to the invisible world around us, inspiring contemplation and meditation. Her titles are places and spaces the paintings recall and are given to the works after completion – an afterthought. The paintings´ great dynamic energy, created by a tension of binary opposites, is ultimately resolved into a harmonic balance. This creation and reconciliation of opposites holds our attention as it reminds the viewers of their own struggle.
– Ursula Hawlitschka

Lani Kennefick
was born in Boston, MA. She received a BFA from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1983 and anticipates receiving an MFA from the New York Academy of Art in 2011. Lani has shown locally on the East End of Long Island and her work has been written about in the East Hampton Star. She has also lectured at The Friends World College in Southampton, NY. Currently she lives in Brooklyn, NY.