Figurative Painting That’s Emphatically Human

Left: Janice Nowinski, “Pink Bathing Suit III” (2016), 0il on canvas, 14 x 11 in; right: Janice Nowinski, “Man drinking in the woods” (2016), oil on canvas, 14 x 11 in (all images courtesy Kent Fine Art)

“New York City galleries are raining down a smattering of group shows that showcase figurative painting.

… New York City galleries are raining down a smattering of group shows that showcase figurative painting. Some of the notables are Me, My, Mine: Commanding Subjectivity in Painting, which recently opened at DC Moore Gallery, and Painting Forward, which recently closed at Thomas Erben Gallery. Into this fray has come Kent Fine Art with On Painting, an exhibition of human and landscape subjects. All of the shows have something in common that can be gleaned from the press release for Painting Forward, which states, “newly relevant positions [for painting] are found by abandoning artifice and irony, and depicting subjects in unadorned and direct ways.”