35th National Juried Show
Blog for Juried show, July 2026 Simon Carr
This year the Juried show presents thirty outstanding artists from a very large pool of submissions, chosen by artist and teacher, Susan Lichtman.
It is a chance to bring together diverse talents and points of view, all with a strength of their own, but all equally illuminated by the work around them. I chose just a few to try and get a sense of the variety in the show. The important thing to note is the high quality of all the works in the show. Susan Lichtman has done a wonderful job of bringing together artist that converse with each other’s work, some very different but all sharing a faith in the importance of seeing, of engaging with the world through painting.
Though I could only choose a few here, all the works deserve to be seen and reflected on.
Dee Jenkins, Model with Head Phones, Oil and Wax on Paper, 26.5" x 25.5", 2022
Wendy Hodge
A playground makes an excellent motif, figures moving, reaching and climbing. Hodge keeps it all diverse but the color unifies, as the gestures rhythmically guide our eyes around the composition, bringing to mind some of the great Poussins with classical themes. The color penetrates, no one area seems isolated, rather the light moves through and around the composition.
The figures remain anonymous, the subject is the interrelation of forms, back and forth, building connections that change how we see.
Wendy Hodge, The Playground, Oil on Linen, 32" x 32", 2025
Joe Morzuch faces us directly in a chiseled self-portrait, emphasizing the solidity of head and character. What at first seems to be a face quickly becomes an essay in the three dimensional of a painting, from tip of the nose back to the eye socket, then all the way back to the ears, the painting brings us palpably into the excitement of visual experience, condensed and clarified.
Joe Morzuch, Blue Self Portrait 1, Oil on Panel, 10" x 7", 2022
Kareem Obey’s interior scene unfolds before us. The perspective builds a clear, rational space. The excitement is in the pulsing color, holding its place but pressing for attention, creating a kind of electric luminosity just below the surface.
Kareem Obey, Winter Dining Room, Oil on Panel, 30" x 24", 2025
Like Obey’s work, Kathleen Eastwood presents us with an interior, but using the rationality of foreshortening, pushed to a limit. Reminiscent of Walter Sickert and the Camden town painters, the interior yields a plastic vision, of complex color relation bursting into light.
Kathleen Eastwood-Riano, Cuidado, Oil on Linen, 30" x 32", 2025
Logan Blanco presents a conundrum. At first a straight ahead (if crowded) flower -in vase- painting, then our perception is shaken by the focus on the vase, breaking the stereotype of still life to send us into a world of looming, anonymous objects. The attention and skill paid to the rendered forms add to an almost surreal silence.
Logan Blanco, Shades of Blue, Oil on Linen on Panel, 20" x 16", 2025
Osnat Olivia brings us back to a luminosity that connects and unifies the objects and figures ,as she tells us in the title, taken from the 17th century painter Nicholas Poussin. In a sense her painting unifies and crosses boundaries between objects, figures and space, creating a dream-like narrative, almost a gentle cubism. But the more I look at the work, the more it seems to reproduce the experience of looking at the very different language of Poussin. His objects and figures are clearly, individually rendered, but his composition, movement and color guide us through and around each form, unifying them. Now, returning to Osnat Olivia’s painting, we see the connection.
Osnat Olivia, Still Life with Poussin’s Figures, Oil on Canvas mounted to Wood, 40cm x 50cm, 2025
The subject in Rachel Hertz’s “The Struggle” at first seems to contradict the image, which seems, if not serene, at least stable, complete. But a closer look, particularly at the lower half of the painting, brings us closer to the emotion of the title. In the end much has been tried and sacrificed, many chances, many possibilities, but only one conclusion. Any painter know this Struggle. And our reward is a gentle luminous rose.
Rachel Hertz, The Struggle, Oil on Linen, 12" x 12", 2025
