Before painting, Emma Webster first constructs dioramas with backdrops, lighting, and clay figures. What is created from those collaged maquettes are stirring paintings that examine both our own natural environments and world-building as a concept. Her recent show at Diane Rosenstein, “Arcadia,” collected those recent oil paintings.
“Scale shifts conflate the panoramic with the miniature, and the dioramas are a pastiche of idylls,” the gallery says. “In these operatic and thrilling paintings, nature is fraught with artifice. The animals are clay figurines. The foliage is plastic. Lighting comes from a flashlight. The entire view is straightforward, giving a clear vantage point. The artist’s hand is evident, fabricating an idealized scene that speaks to her desire to build one’s own world: an Arcadia.”
See more of her paintings below.
Both based in Berlin by way of Australia, 
Kathy Ager’s stirring paintings, inspired by classical still-life and Baroque iconography, integrate pop cultural and personal objects. In a new show at Thinkspace Projects, titled “Golden Age,” her recent explorations are offered, each showing the artist’s knack in both realism and graphical, toon-influenced rendering. The show opens tomorrow and runs through July 20.
