the female gaze

Gay Block, Vivienne Flesher, Nina Katz, and Heather Wilcoxon

Artist Reception: July 10, 2021, 3-5 pm.

Gay Block has a long history of making portraits, more of which portray women. She began with B & W portraits of her Houston Jewish community, then photographed young girls in summer camp, and continued with sun-drenched photos of the Jewish community in South Miami Beach. 

Her portraits reveal a mutual endeavor to expose all emotions - happy, sad, proud, the ravages of age… All the portraits are taken with such love and respect of the sitter that we never feel intrusive.

The paintings that Vivienne Flesher is showing are small and demand an intimate moment with each one of them. It might seem an overwhelming task, as there are well over 70 pieces showing, but the rewards are high as we are privy to a myriad of women. We meet a high fashion model, a fragment of a classical sculpture torso, and an almost Hopper-like glimpse of a private mood in a sad hotel.

Nina Katz’s work also revels in a love of women. All the paintings—from a parent to a friend to a stranger—give us the net result of many years of  observing with an unerring eye many of  the nuances of the sitter’s personality. 

Heather Wilcoxon’s latest work is a departure from the ships and docks of the last few years. This latest oeuvre is a series of masked women. The obvious reference here is the pandemic but it becomes a great opportunity to speak about women’s hesitation in revealing their true selves due to the all-too-often harsh manner in which society as a whole can and will judge by appearance.

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