Joanne Fox’s recent paintings on canvas are bold statements, using color, gesture, and composition and scale to capture attention and generate emotional and physical responses. Many are purely abstract (Sunday, Winter), while others have a figurative subject (Dance) or even buildings and landscape (Spring). What ties them together as a body of work is their adherence to an architectural composition that underlies each one, providing structure and grounding for the viewer who is then invited to indulge, with the artist, in the pleasures of paint as it embodies movement, gesture, accident, and emotion. Since moving her painting studio from Sausalito to Sonoma Valley, Joanne Fox’s oil paintings have turned away from urban iconography to delight in the magic of the changing seasons in the northern California landscape. For example, in August Grasses (pictured above), the artist creates a richly textured surface, capturing the robust and yet soft textures of the golden landscape that is so ubiquitous to northern California at the peak of the summer. Unlike most pictures of rolling golden hills, however, this one frames the grass itself very tightly, and contrasting its hue with a deep blue evening sky above. As such, this is a meditation on life’s state of constant change - as the summer turns to fall, as day and dusk turn to night, the artist reminds us to be present to the beauty before us, while being ready to let it go. Joanne Fox has a BFA from the Art Institute of Chicago and an MA in Art and Anthropology from Goddard College in Vermont. She has shown in galleries across the United States, and has work in numerous private and corporate collections.