Over the past five decades, Judith Seligson (b. 1950, Philadelphia, PA) has painted hard-edge abstractions with varicolored geometric shapes that touch and traverse one another. Her works invite the viewer to contemplate the existential space between both represented and real forms. Seligson begins each work—ranging in scale from intimate to immense—with a graphite line drawing that she fixes in place with layers of diluted gesso. The artist then applies oil paint freehand without a straight edge or tape. “I abandon the ruler for my eye,” Seligson explains.
While attending Harvard University from which she graduated with a B.A. in Economics in 1972, Seligson trained with painter Flora Natapoff. She later audited Philip Guston’s graduate seminar at Boston University and studied with Leo Manso and Victor Candell at the Provincetown Workshop. Informing Seligson’s oeuvre is the color theory of Josef Albers; the compositional dynamism of Paul Klee; the “push and pull” method of Hans Hofmann, who juxtaposed hues and marks that appear to emerge from and recede into his surfaces; and the dictums of Henri Matisse, who asserted that painting begins when the artist sees both the positive shape and the surrounding negative shape at once.
Seligson’s painting practice extends to collage, drawing, printmaking, multimedia video, and textile. She has been the subject of solo exhibitions at Galerie Mourlot, New York (2022; 2016–17); The Athenaeum Gallery, Alexandria, VA (2016); and the Jane Haslem Gallery, Washington, D.C. (2007; ‘04; ‘91), among others. Seligson will be featured in a forthcoming group show at the Wilson Museum, Southern Vermont Art Center, Manchester, VT (2024–25). Her work has been acquired by public collections such as AllianceBernstein, the Library of Congress, and the Schlesinger Library at Radcliffe College. The artist splits her time between New York City and Alexandria, VA.
All artwork images on this website (c) the artist.