In Thompson Giroux Gallery’s Visions and Voices, four artists beautifully illuminate the double meaning behind the show’s title: certainly each has an unmistakably strong vision driving their work and a distinctive voice that sets them apart, but lingering within the finished pieces are the mysterious, private visions and voices each artist has attended to while creating them.

D. Jack Solomon begins his paintings with a plan, often in the form of a miniature or maquette, then unleashes a vast vocabulary of colors, patterns, symbols, graphic design elements, art references, pop iconography, cartoons, graffiti, and whatever else has caught his attention.  Synthesized into paintings that vibrate with intensity over a rigorous structure, familiar images collide and co-exist in a multi-layered plane.

Lily Prince is immersed in landscape; she uses her personal observations in nature to explore universal ideas of perception, memory, time, and connectedness.  Her paintings record the beauty she sees in front of her, but her expressionistic marks and use of color also capture the energy and atmosphere of place--past, present, and future.

Sculptor Robin Whiteman’s clay pieces emerge from myth and dream—human/animal hybrids that suggest both psychological portraits and spirit guides, archetypal and personal.  Dignified and self-possessed, her figures invite investigation and interpretation but will not be defined; creatures of the unconscious that have been with us all along.

Similarly, Irving Kriesberg’s work frequently makes use of imaginative, mystical animal imagery.  His figurative expressionist style combines with influences from non-Western cultures, ancient civilizations, and world religions to produce vibrant, idiosyncratic paintings that tap into our primeval memory and spirituality.

Mindful attention and a search for clarity enable the visions and voices of these four artists to reach beyond the personal, into the universal.