“Untitled” - Sophie Feinstein

This past summer, I viewed the Museum of Modern Art’s exhibition, “The Long Run,”which presented works in the museum’s collection that date back to the later era of the featured artist’s careers. I was particularly interested in Joan Mitchell’s works, which diverged from most of the other pieces in the exhibition not only due to subject matter but sheer size – on canvases as wide as nine feet and as tall as thirteen, Mitchell’s paintings practically engulfed its audience, surrounding them in the jarring extracts of a memories. My piece was inspired particularly by “Wood, Wind, No Tuba” (1980), drawing from Mitchell’s highly contrasting colors and brushstrokes that vary in size and intensity. Experimenting with Mitchell’s style, abstract expressionism, presents a unique challenge to my innate artistic tendencies. My obsessive compulsive nature tends to manifest itself in the subconscious balancing of color, composition, and subject matter, and is directly challenged by this style that demands a physical and emotional input relying on the loss of a degree of control.

Sophie Feinstein. “Untitled,” 2018, 36” x 36”. Oil on canvas, pomegranates, oranges, grapes, gold leaf.