Comfort Station is pleased to present Cold and Dark, which includes paintings by Eleanor Ray, Greta Waller, and Gwendolyn Zabicki. Works selected by Zabicki will be on display throughout the month of July. Gwendolyn Zabicki first saw Greta Waller’s work in 2008. Waller had made a painting of a rejection letter from RISD. The letter was unfolded on a red table and though its specific words were unreadable, the painfully short paragraphs of a form letter were apparent. Zabicki recalls feeling as though she had just received a “punch in the stomach”. Waller’s ice paintings are equally powerful. They are masterfully painted, temporal and sensory. They are working within the traditions of painting, yet they show their ties to modernity—vanitas paintings made with machined blocks of ice.

The familiarity of Waller’s subject matter is echoed in the paintings of Eleanor Ray. Ray paints passageways, windows, and walkways, all places we have been before, but on the smallest scale. They evoke the moodiness of Hopper in the most modest and efficient way possible. They take what is briefly glimpsed (and often overlooked) as a subject, an approach that Zabicki has always hoped to achieve in her own work. They then go on to do what every good painting should do—they subvert expectations, in this case, that the ordinary should be synonymous with the mundane. Taken as whole, this selection of paintings creates a cool, dark place—a welcome respite from the loud, hot days of summer.

For further information about this show, please contact Comfort Station curator Robyn Paprocki.

Greta Waller was born in Indianapolis, Indiana. She holds a BFA from Cooper Union, New York City and an MFA from the University of California, Los Angeles. She currently lives and works in Los Angeles. http://www.maloneyfineart.com/#!waller/ck5
Eleanor Ray was born in Gainesville, Florida. She has a BA in English and Studio Art from Amherst College, and an MFA in painting from the New York Studio School. She currently lives in New York. Her solo show at Steven Harvey Fine Art Projects in New York was named one of the top ten shows of 2013 by critic Jerry Saltz. http://eleanorkray.com/section/330424_New_Work.html
Gwendolyn Zabicki: Gwendolyn Zabicki was born and works in Chicago, IL. She earned her BFA from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago in 2005 and her MFA from the University of Illinois at Chicago in 2012.
http://www.gwendolynzabicki.com

images: (L) Next Door Neighbor by Gwendolyn Zabicki, (C) Blue Hallway by Eleanor Ray, and (R) First Block by Greta Waller

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