Brenda Zalmany

The Opening Gallery is pleased to present 366: A Watercolor Portrait A Day, a solo exhibition of works by Brenda Zalmany curated by Sozita Goudouna, PhD. This exhibition is based on a research project that started in April 2015, when one member of the local arts community came to Zalmany’s studio to sit for a watercolor portrait each day during a leap year, consisting of 366 days. Because the artist works with the sketchbook flat, the subjects could observe and comment on their image as it was painted. Conversations informed the painting, and the painting informed the conversations. After the painting was completed, the artist photographed each sitter holding their portrait. The photos were made in collaboration, with the sitter often choosing the pose and the lighting. Each day, Brenda posted the new photo on social media. These posts gained a following, often with hundreds of “likes” and dozens of thoughtful comments.

Being painted is an intense emotional experience, wrapped up with ideas about mortality, self-esteem, and beauty. Discussions about career, inspiration, survival, aging, and child-raising ensued. The sharp contrast between the intimate shared experience of the portrait session and the public response through social media was exhilarating. Through social media, each subject was celebrated and an intricate web of connections was woven. 366 was experiential and whatever happened in the painting was evidence of that experience; the daily discipline, conversations, photography, and interaction on social media were as much the art as the actual watercolors.

Brenda Zlamany is a painter who lives and works in Brooklyn, New York. Since 1982 her work has appeared in over a dozen solo exhibitions (including, in New York City, at Jonathan O’Hara Gallery, Stux Gallery, Jessica Fredericks Gallery, and E. M. Donahue Gallery, and, in Brussels, at Sabine Wachters Fine Arts) and numerous group shows in the United States, Europe, Asia, and the Middle East.

Museums that have exhibited her work include the Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei; the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C.; the Boulder Museum of Contemporary Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Frankfurter Kunstverein, Germany; the National Museum, Gdansk, Poland; and Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent, Belgium. Her work has been reviewed in Artforum, Art in America, ARTnews, Flash Art, the New Yorker, the New York Times, and elsewhere and is held in the collections of the Cincinnati Art Museum; Deutsche Bank; the Museum of Modern Art, Houston; the Neuberger Museum of Art; the Virginia Museum of Fine Art; the World Bank; and Yale University. Zlamany has collaborated with authors and editors of the New York Times Magazine on several portrait commissions, including an image of Marian Anderson for an article by Jessye Norman and one of Osama bin Laden for the cover of the September 11, 2005, issue. Grants she has received include a Peter S. Reed Foundation Grant (2018), Fulbright Fellowship (2011), Pollock-Krasner Foundation grant (2006–07), New York Foundation for the Arts Artists’ Fellowship in painting (1994), and Jerome Foundation Fellowship (1981–82). She received a BA from Wesleyan University in 1981.