Gestural Expressions
presented by
Slate Contemporary
July 17 - August 29th
Artist Reception, August 8th from 2-4pm - RSVP
5510 College Avenue, Oakland, California
Left painting, Karen Silve, Summit, 180x150 cm, 70x60 in. Center painting by Nicole Mueller. Right painting by Joanne Fox. Photo by: John Janca
A quick note to let you know about this exhibition, Gestural Expressions. I’m more than pleased to be a part of it with 4 other exceptional woman painters! Please read the exhibition statement below. Plus, TODAY is an artist’s reception in which three of the artists will be present. If you are in the Bay area, I hope you can make it. I, unfortunately, will not be there as I am in France. But my work will be there:)
Artist Reception, August 8th from 2-4pm - RSVP
Also featuring a tasting of specialty drinks from Rue de Rêve—a local women-owned apéritif producer.
Left painting, Karen Silve, Passage, 180x150 cm, 70x60 in. Right paintings by Nicole Mueller. Photo by: John Janca
EXHIBITION STATEMENT
The history of Abstract Expressionism has often been told through a predominantly masculine lens. SLATE Contemporary Gallery’s exhibition Gestural Expressions offers a timely reconsideration of that narrative, bringing together five accomplished women artists—Maria Burtis, Amy Donaldson, Joanne Fox, Nicole Mueller, and Karen Silve—whose work demonstrates the enduring vitality, complexity, and expressive power of gestural abstraction.
Emerging in New York during the 1940s and reaching prominence after World War II, Abstract Expressionism transformed the course of American art. Artists embraced scale, spontaneity, and experimentation, developing a visual language built from gesture, materiality, and emotional immediacy. Yet the movement's public identity became closely tied to ideals of masculine individualism, reinforced by critics, institutions, and Cold War cultural narratives. As a result, the history of Abstract Expressionism often privileged the image of the heroic male painter, obscuring the many artists who expanded the movement’s possibilities. The works in Gestural Expressions reflect this legacy while demonstrating how five contemporary women painters have continued to reinvent the approach as a deeply personal and relevant form of expression. Ultimately, this exhibition reveals a broader and more nuanced understanding of the genre: one rooted not only in bold action, but also in intuition, reflection, resilience, and transformation.
For Maria Burtis, painting emerges through a dialogue between movement and stillness. Her layered compositions evolve through cycles of revealing and obscuring, creating soft atmospheric spaces that invite contemplation while retaining traces of the artist's physical presence. Many begin with a memory of a place, but end with a field of colored forms that invite the viewer to access another world.
Amy Donaldson likewise embraces process as a generative force, building luminous and intensely physical material surfaces through scraping, layering, and reconstruction. Her richly textured paintings balance exuberance and delicacy, evoking imagined landscapes, personal memories, and spiritual exultation.
Joanne Fox approaches abstraction through themes of transformation and renewal. Influenced by the rhythms of Northern California's natural environment and shaped by decades as a dancer, her paintings use the body’s movement to channel resilience and hope through dynamic gesture and vibrant color. Leaving space on the canvas allows each of her brush strokes to take on more power. Nicole Mueller's work is equally rooted in intuition, drawing from personal memory, psychology, and bodily awareness. Through a fluid abstract vocabulary, she explores identity as something constantly shifting, evolving, and interconnected.
Karen Silve's paintings also occupy a space between landscape and embodiment, where forms emerge and dissolve in environments that feel at once external and deeply internal. Informed by the distinct terrains of the Pacific Northwest and southern France, her work explores vulnerability, refuge, and the possibility of transformation. Whether suggesting a body merging with the landscape or a landscape charged with emotional presence, Silve's paintings do not seek to depict nature directly; rather, they evoke the sense of awe and wonder it inspires, inviting viewers into spaces of reflection and discovery.
Taken together, these artists demonstrate that gestural abstraction remains a powerful and evolving language. Their works honor the experimental spirit that animated the founding generation while expanding its narrative beyond the confines of its traditional mythology. Rather than emphasizing heroic individualism, Gestural Expressions foregrounds the richness of subjective experience, revealing gesture as a means of connection—to place, memory, emotion, and self. In doing so, the exhibition not only revisits the legacy of Abstract Expressionism but also reimagines its future through the work of five artists whose voices continue to broaden and enrich the field.
Thanks for reading. Please feel free to share.
Very warmly, Karen Silve