Kathryn Markel Fine Arts is pleased to announce Farm Flowers, an exhibition of new paintings by Arielle Zamora. This will be their second solo exhibition with the gallery and an artist reception will be held September 24th from 6-8pm.
Zamora creates thoughtful, minimalist paintings that draw from both natural and built environments. Interested in the relationships between line and form, they look to the repetition found in architecture and nature to bring structure and a sense of calm to their compositions. Mixing paint with joint compound and applying it in layers, they sand, scrape, and score the surface to create rhythmic linear forms. The measured, repeating lines are carved through the surface to reveal colors from the layers beneath. There is precision in the work but it is never entirely perfect. Evidence of the hand remains visible throughout the seemingly immaculate facade.
Farm Flowers brings a new influence to the forefront in Zamora’s work. For years they have worked as both an artist and a flower farmer and floral designer, while resisting the idea that the two practices overlapped. Now they have begun to embrace how naturally one informs the other: “Flower farming, like my art, is a practice in form, color, and repetition; from field prep to variety selection to harvesting the same crop day after day, so many aspects of farming are parallel to my art practice.” In these new paintings, deep earthy maroons and browns meet pastel pinks and sky blues, drawing from the colors and forms Zamora encounters every day. Horizontal and vertical lines, curved slopes, and incised, irregular lines suggest rows of fields, architectural facades, horizon lines, windows, stems, and paths. The warm palette and repetition reflect Zamora’s quiet days spent “in a hot sunny field immersed in scents and pollinators.”
Arielle Zamora is a Portland, Oregon-based painter and printmaker. They received their BFA from the Oregon College of Art and Craft and exhibit widely in galleries across the United States. Alongside their studio practice they own Small Yard Flowers, a floral design studio and garden, and manage Indigo Gardens PDX, a 5-acre flower farm.
