First Thursday Opening Reception: January 2, 5-8pm
Artists' Panel Discussion with our New Members. Hosted by Kendra Roberts, BFG. Thursday, January 23, 6pm
Songs For a Dark Night, an evening of music and immersive performance. $10 at the door, Friday, January 31, 7:30pm
JANUARY 1 - FEBRUARY 1 — MAIN GALLERY AND GALLERY 2
Blackfish Gallery is delighted to introduce our four newest Artist Members. Malon Al-Jiboori, Pomegranate Doyle, Dede Lucia and Christa Nye were selected after an extensive jury and interview process, designed to unearth promising, emerging and established artists with strong voices and diverse backgrounds and training. We hope you enjoy their debut exhibition at Blackfish and follow their work in years to come.
New Members Show
Malon Al-Jiboori, Pomegranate Doyle, Dede Lucia & Christa Nye,
Uncovering
— Malon Al-Jiboori—
Untitled (2024) — Mae Al-Jiboori, acrylic and oil pastel
Created by one’s own vulnerability and desire to express and convey deep-seated emotions.
Go As You Mean to Live
— Pomegranate Doyle—
Creator / Destroyer (2023) — Pomegranate Doyle, Oil on Canvas, 23.5” x 19.5”
Go As You Mean to Live by Pomegranate Doyle is a bold invitation to embrace the transformative power of culture and protest. Through vivid imagery and evocative themes, Doyle envisions a world rooted in fairness, empathy, and connection. Her work celebrates the wisdom of ancestors, the sanctity of bodily autonomy, and the sacredness of queerness, pleasure, and masculinity. This exhibition challenges us to imagine—and begin living—the equitable, compassionate world we want to create.
Pith
— Dede Luria—
A Good Match (2022)
— Dede Lucia Oil on Canvas 66” x 72”
“pith”
noun 1.) the essence of something.
verb 2.) to pierce, or sever the spinal cord of an animal so as to kill or immobilize it.
In her first show with Blackfish Gallery, Deanna M. (Dede) Lucia has chosen a selection of works from a 2021-2022 series which leveraged the metaphor and symbolism of natureculture as informed by change, growth, and transformation. Informed by her own experience of loss and displacement, the paintings deliver surreal landscapes based on actual places and juxtaposed by personal objects and furniture. Dede’s use of vibrant, saturated color attracts a viewer to believe the fiction to which she was also seduced. Throughout the original series she painted the distortion of a relationship as it unfolded. The works specify a particular time and place, but also eerily speculative and predictive to a then unknown series of truths. The culminating narrative exacted a semiotic language, autobiographically preserving and honoring the experience of the devolving fiction which developed into a specific phenomenological feminist language.
Something Happening Here
— Christa Nye —
Dream Dancing (2024) — Christa Nye, acrylic on board, 24" x 18"
When I started painting “Dream Dance”, I just wanted to express the sense of personal freedom that I feel through my work. The approach was to create from my imagination without any limits or boundaries, and to be fearless. I tried to let go of any preconceived ideas and let my thoughts flow...leave my comfort zone, and take risks to enjoy the moment.
As usual, I was listening to music. My playlist included the albums ‘Fresh Cream’, ‘Disraeli Gears’ and ‘Wheels of Fire’, all by the band Cream. I love the “free” approach displayed through the music. At the time, it was nothing like anything anyone had ever heard before, with guitar riffs, drumming, and vocals that captured the spirit of a generation.
When I listened to the song “Politician” it still resonated with me. Without looking back with nostalgia and rose colored glasses, I see a strong relationship to today’s politics. The sixties were a time of great political change, tumultuousness and divisiveness. The flower children were certainly naive and idealistic, believing that love could change the world. Idealism gave way to disillusionment, cynicism and skepticism. The mistrust towards politicians and government was and remains prevalent.
As I question what the impact of issues like censorship, political interference, and suppression could have on our culture, I have come to understand how critical free expression is in the rapidly changing times in which we find ourselves. Artistic expression is a key issue for freedom in a democracy. My art helps me hold on to a moral center. To quote Buffalo Springfield
“... nobody’s right if everybody’s wrong”.
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JAMES HIBBARD GALLERY
Full of Empty
— Robert Shepard —
Reckoning (2023) — Robert Shepard, acrylic on canvas, 37" x 48"
This group of paintings was completed between 2023 – 2024. Even though they were done within that two-year time span, they represent a snapshot of a larger, ongoing practice of painting and discovery. These paintings are not specifically about anything, but do have the underlying motive of exploring the idea of emptying out in order to make room for the new – of creating space, and space equals substance. These painting represent a contemplative approach that embraces the notion that to reduce is to gain.
Blackfishers Doing Cool Stuff
See what Blackfish Artists are involved with outside the gallery this month.