About Town: CommonUncommon

Artist Kathleen Zann Isacson was first introduced to our community by Nancy Little, a Bronxville resident who runs the National Academy School of Fine Arts on the Upper East Side.  After participating in a group exhibit organized by Little a few years ago, Kathleen had her first show at Little Gallery last fall, which featured her candid portraits of people abroad.

This month, she returns with the show, commonUncommon: the still life reexamined, a collection of work that, through color and lighting, brings the ordinary to another level.  Familiar objects like flowers, shells, and fruit are examined in new lights and scales. 

Kathleen explains,  “I tend to paint in a series of the same subject to explore [it] more closely. With the pears and tomatoes paintings I wanted to examine the idea of scale while focusing on the lushness of the subject through light and color. Scale is also the focus of the two orchid paintings--to contrast the perceived delicacy of the orchid in a large format so that the viewer feels engulfed by the flower.”

While her work makes the ordinary extraordinary, Kathleen is a strict traditionalist when it comes to her medium.  She tells us, “I paint only in watercolors and…use no white paint, letting the white of the paper serve as the white in the painting. This necessitates careful planning to leave the white areas free of color while painting because once pigment is applied to watercolor paper it is almost impossible to lift the color, thus rendering the whites unusable and requiring starting over.”

This approach has garnered the admiration of her peers. Kathleen is a Signature Member of the North East Watercolor Society and has a painting on exhibit at the National Watercolor Society member show in Los Angeles. 

The Bronxville Library show kicked off yesterday and runs through the end of June.  There will be a reception at the Library this Saturday from 3-5pm (a nice way to wind down after the Bronxville Sidewalk Sale, perhaps). 

After viewing commonUncommon at The Little Gallery, if you still crave more, Kathleen has additional work on display at , and is also part of a group exhibit, titled Painting Governors Island, which is on view through the summer on Governors Island in New York harbor. 

We’ve been procrastinating a trip to the Island since it opened to the public, so perhaps this will finally get us over there.  In the meantime, we’ll enjoy this uncommon treat closer to home.