ANDREA BELAG

Wavecrest, 2024. Four-color lithograph. 35 x 30 in. Edition of 25

Andrea Belag is a painter who looks to nature as inspiration for her colorful abstractions. In these three new prints, bold gestural colors capture the essence of the dynamic forces of the sea. In her approach to printmaking, the artist chose to work in lithography for its direct quality of drawing. Her broad gestural strokes, drawn with a loaded brush onto the plate, create the sense of motion and weather.

The dynamic juxtaposition of colors in Wavecrest reinforces the elemental quality of her subject. By layering colors in and around a central motif, Belag invites us in to experience the print as a translation of forces in nature.

With each of the prints, the artist investigates a visual moment of contemplation, drawing us into a color world that exists alongside the natural world. Her language of forms reveals a common experience, if we just open our eyes to it.

– Andrew Mockler

Andrea Belag’s paintings and works on paper have been widely exhibited and collected throughout the US and internationally, in venues that include: The Jewish Museum, NY; Pera Museum, Istanbul; Mead Museum, Amherst; Newark Museum, NJ; New Jersey Museum, NJ, Sprengel Museum, Germany and Jeddah Collection, United States Embassy, Saudi Arabia.

Recent exhibitions include Twombly’s Green, SHFAP; Currents, Bienvenu Steinberg & C; American Academy Arts Invitational; Under the Pergola, New Collector’s Gallery, NY; Sequences: Ode to Minor White, Brattleboro Museum and Art Center, VT; Inheritance, Morgan Lehman Gallery, NY; Beachcomber, Philip Slein Gallery, St. Louis; GhostWriter, SHFAP, NY.

Belag has been the recipient of various fellowships and public commissions from The Guggenheim Foundation, Rockefeller Foundation at Bellagio, Italy; National Endowment for the Arts; Yaddo Foundation; NY State Council on the Arts; MTA Arts for Transit and Urban Design, Ave U, Culver line, Brooklyn Transitions; NYC Percent for Art Program, New Fore Station Co. 268 Ladder 137, Waves.

The artist lives and works in New York City and Far Rockaway, Queens. She studied at the New York Studio School of Drawing, Painting & Sculpture.