Skip to main content
Want more images or videos?
Request additional images or videos from the seller
1 of 2

Judith Berry
Head with Dominoes, Contemporary Oil on Wood Panel, 2010s, Unframed

2024

$1,200
£907.31
€1,062.27
CA$1,707.30
A$1,736.64
CHF 996.65
MX$20,876.43
NOK 11,625.92
SEK 11,735.37
DKK 7,941.41

About the Item

Portrait is a result of transformations in Judith Berry’s painting practice from singular landscapes into abstracted forms, still lives, and now, into human and animal life. These lush, painterly oils are meditations on the colour green—sap green, olive green, vert tendre—bathed in the warm light of the golden hour. These works represent the concretization of nature, an evolution which contains traces of past forms incarnating as if they are still in transition. The figures in these portraits have a tenuous hold on reality. There is an oneiric energy here, a sense that the animal and human forms are mid manifestation and could easily change back into abstractions or plant life. Most remarkable about Berry’s new body of work is the equine (re)emergence. Horses have been a part of human history for millennia, they represent control and freedom, power and its lack. They’ve been used for transportation, war, entertainment, as well as deeply appreciated for their beauty; they are powerful creatures able to run at incredible speeds, yet as prey, they are easily spooked. In Portrait with Horse and Pumpkin, a figure offers a bucket of water containing the reflection of a pumpkin to a masked horse. Guardians shows two horses, sentinels or oracles, standing by a liminal frontier. Their coats and hoods give a dual impression of protection and restriction. In The World Upside Town Triptych a horse is on its back in a posture of joy, vulnerability, or defeat. Long, multicoloured bead-like strands of colour that often appeared in Berry’s past paintings slither across the canvas. The coats of the horses are dotted with tiny shrubbery, giving the sense that the animal itself is a landscape. Landscape Hood reveals a being whose red core is obscured by curtain-like hair overgrown with neat rows of vegetation. This figure could be a priest of a mushroom cult in some otherworldly dimension. In Double Portrait with Blocks two figures are cut through with red, the red interiors in many of these works call to mind the hidden pulse of blood within bodies. Attached to their heads are blocks which could represent thoughts or energy blockages. Fissure conjures a landscape that is destroyed even as it is imagined. Berry has a notable interest in fusing and deconstructing forms, proven by her longstanding investigation into the dynamic between abstraction and figuration. Her surreal symbolic language that is emerging now is poetic and evocative, an analysis of the way forms come into being and of the interconnectedness of life. In Portrait, identities are obscured, but the energies and structures underlying things is revealed. There is a quiet strangeness in these paintings, along with an eerie sense of proximity to the primordial soup of creation. The paintings in Portrait aren’t portraits in any kind of traditional sense; there are no identities, there are no individual personalities being intimated. Yet they are figurations of beings all the same, perhaps catalogued as an artist-anthropologist might document their discoveries in some foreign land. Judith Berry was born in London, Ontario and grew up in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. She studied at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design in Halifax and spent one year in the Studio Program at the Banff Centre School of Fine Arts. She has had solo exhibitions across Canada in Montreal, Toronto, Calgary and Ottawa. Judith has also shown in numerous group exhibitions including exhibitions at the Musée du Québec and the Canada Science and Technology Museum. She has received funding from the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the Canada Council. Her work is in various collections including: the Musee du Québec, the City of Ottawa, the City of Montreal, the Royal Bank, and the Art Bank of the Canada Council. She has served as a jury member for the Conseil des arts et des lettres du Québec and the City of Ottawa.
  • Creator:
    Judith Berry (1961, Canadian)
  • Creation Year:
    2024
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 10 in (25.4 cm)Width: 8 in (20.32 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Movement & Style:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Montreal, CA
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU47616250502

More From This Seller

View All
Two Heads with Ladder, Contemporary Oil on Wood Panel, 2010-

Two Heads with Ladder, Contemporary Oil on Wood Panel, 2010-

By Judith Berry

Located in Montreal, Quebec

Portrait is a result of transformations in Judith Berry’s painting practice from singular landscapes into abstracted forms, still lives, and now, into human and animal life. These lu...

Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

Sideways Head with Landscape, Contemporary Oil on Wood Panel, 2010+

Sideways Head with Landscape, Contemporary Oil on Wood Panel, 2010+

By Judith Berry

Located in Montreal, Quebec

Portrait is a result of transformations in Judith Berry’s painting practice from singular landscapes into abstracted forms, still lives, and now, into human and animal life. These lu...

Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

Portrait with Two Small Waves, Contemporary Oil on Wood Panel, 2010+

Portrait with Two Small Waves, Contemporary Oil on Wood Panel, 2010+

By Judith Berry

Located in Montreal, Quebec

Portrait is a result of transformations in Judith Berry’s painting practice from singular landscapes into abstracted forms, still lives, and now, into human and animal life. These lu...

Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

Collapsing Wall and Sticks, Contemporary Oil on Wood Panel, 2010+

Collapsing Wall and Sticks, Contemporary Oil on Wood Panel, 2010+

By Judith Berry

Located in Montreal, Quebec

Portrait is a result of transformations in Judith Berry’s painting practice from singular landscapes into abstracted forms, still lives, and now, into human and animal life. These lu...

Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

Finding a Way Forward, Contemporary Oil Painting on Wood Panel, 2010+

Finding a Way Forward, Contemporary Oil Painting on Wood Panel, 2010+

By Judith Berry

Located in Montreal, Quebec

Portrait is a result of transformations in Judith Berry’s painting practice from singular landscapes into abstracted forms, still lives, and now, into human and animal life. These lu...

Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

Broken Mirror Oil Painting on Wood Panel, Contemporary, 2010-

Broken Mirror Oil Painting on Wood Panel, Contemporary, 2010-

By Judith Berry

Located in Montreal, Quebec

Portrait is a result of transformations in Judith Berry’s painting practice from singular landscapes into abstracted forms, still lives, and now, into human and animal life. These lu...

Category

2010s Contemporary Figurative Paintings

Materials

Oil, Wood Panel

You May Also Like

Stare Down, Oil Painting on MDF Panel

Stare Down, Oil Painting on MDF Panel

By Dwayne Wolff

Located in Yardley, PA

This is a one-of-a-kind original painting. A still life of puppet on stack of soap bars. The piece ships ready to hang and is signed on the mid right side by the artist. This it...

Category

2010s Contemporary Still-life Paintings

Materials

Oil

Nocturne. 2004, oil on canvas, 67x79 cm

Nocturne. 2004, oil on canvas, 67x79 cm

By Janis Zemitis

Located in Riga, LV

Nocturne. 2004, oil on canvas, 67x79 cm Abstract still life with game cards and musical instruments In 1958 he graduated from the Riga Art School of J. Rosenthal, in 1964 Art Academy of Latvian State, painting department, Head of the diploma work "Working in the forest" E. Kalninsh. He participated in the exhibition since 1966. Member of Artists Union of Latvia since 1970. From 1993-2000 member of the Association "B13". He worked as a teacher at the Riga 19th school and in the 17th evening high school (1961-1965), in the Riga Art School of J. Rosenthal (1965-1981), worked at the Arts Academy of Latvia since 1981 - in charge of Department of Painting (1993- 1998), professor since 1993. From 1997- 2000 Professor at the Evangelical Lutheran Christian Academy of Latvia. At the end of the 60s, in the 70s painted many figurative compositions of the historical genre. Reborn impression of cubism, painted still lifes and landscapes. Paintings by Janis Zemitis...

Category

Early 2000s Cubist Still-life Paintings

Materials

Oil, Canvas

Head to Head, Painting, Acrylic on Wood Panel

Head to Head, Painting, Acrylic on Wood Panel

By Kevin Brewerton

Located in Yardley, PA

This painting is from the series, The Lovers. Bold paint strokes and composition reveals the subject of the paintings of two boxers but are they fighting or...

Category

21st Century and Contemporary Abstract Abstract Paintings

Materials

Acrylic

"Ab-scrap" - Abstract Geometric Composition in Acrylic on Wood Panel

"Ab-scrap" - Abstract Geometric Composition in Acrylic on Wood Panel

Located in Soquel, CA

"Ab-scrap" - Abstract Geometric Composition in Acrylic on Wood Panel Dynamic abstract composition by Sam Dantone (American, b. 1971). This piece was created as a part of the "Ab-scrap" series, where Dantone uses excess paint from his sign painting business to create new compositions. Whenever there is a little extra paint on a brush, Dantone would add it to a panel, slowly creating a new composition out of the leftovers from his other work. Thus, each piece contains a wide variety of colors and brushstrokes, and the echoes of other compositions. Signed "Sam Dantone" on verso. No frame. Board size: 20.75"H x 8.75"W Sam Dantone (American, b. 1971) is an artist from Oregon who works as a sign painter, designer, and sculptor. Artist’s Statement: “Not once in my life do I know a time when I have not been an artist. My father tells that I once copied the Kleenex logo from the side of the box, at age three. I tribute my abilities to naïve confidence and other’s positive attention. As a kid, drawing was magical . . . Though my art stylings vary widely, one thread stitches all of my work together, (my art) is my critique on man’s apparent love for life and his constant destruction of it.” Exhibitions: 2015 - FoundSpace, Jackson, WY 2013 - Pacific Park Gallery, Coos Bay...

Category

2010s Abstract Geometric Abstract Paintings

Materials

Acrylic, Wood Panel