Kate Russo | Art New England
July 6, 2023 | Carl Little
Kate Russo: Storyteller
Kate Russo's oil-on-panel Men Watching Women Working, 2022, consists of five neat rows of four checker-patterned ovals arranged against an equally decorative background. Each oval features a distinct design and palette-distant kin to Eastern European Easter eggs, though more in line with Op Art. The paint is applied with exquisite precision.
The 20 ovals represent, in Russo's words, "a colorist's journey through five hundred years (16th century to the 21st) of art history on a specific theme." She carefully matches the color scheme of an original painting by a deceased male artist so that each oval becomes, in a manner of speaking, his portrait. A key to the painting lists the individual works transcribed, among them, Vermeer's A Maid Asleep (1657), Millet's The Gleaners (1857), Vuillard's Woman Sweeping (1893), and Stuart Davis's Servant Girls (1913). A similar approach marks Men Spying on Women Bathing, Men Staring at Women from Behind, Men Observe Women Sewing, and other paintings in the show.
