Neysa Grassi (Philadelphia)

Neysa Grassi
Red Current, 2005
oil on linen
18 1/2 x 20 1/8 inches

Neysa Grassi
The Return, 2006
oil on linen
16 x 16 inches

Neysa Grassi
Fever or Heat, 2005
oil on canvas
12 1/4 x 12 1/4 inches

Knots of paint which reveal little contrast criss-cross Neysa Grassi's paintings. These conduits are highways, nerve bundles, twisted knots of tissue, clotted vessels, or clogged freeways. They might be carrying messages -- perhaps urgent ones -- but their paths are complicated by contradiction and confusion. One imagines a sensation trying to travel through the gnarled miasma of paint which Grassi has woven in a typical picture. The sensation of a burn travels from finger tip to brain, shooting back a message of danger at light-speed over an impossibly complex network. But these hints of speed and complexity are contrasted against the primitive bluntness of Ms. Grassi's paintings. The antithesis of action painting, Ms. Grassi's pictures might almost constitute stasis painting; preferring the deliberate and slow to the gestural suggestion of kinesthesis.

Ms. Grassi received a certificate from the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts. She has been included in several group and solo exhibitions locally and regionally, including a Challenge Exhibition at the Samuel S. Fleisher Art Memorial, and the Biennial '93 at the Delaware Art Museum, and exhibitions at Paul Cava Gallery, Momenta Art Alternatives, Levy Gallery at Moore College of Art and Design, and the Beaver College Art Gallery. Her work is included in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Telefax, Bell of Pennsylvania, and Blue Cross of Pennsylvania. She is represented in Philadelphia by Locks Gallery.