RAiR | 1978-79 & 1990-91

Jean Promutico

New York abstract painter Jean Promutico (1936-2018) was born in Baltimore. She graduated with a BFA Magna Cum Laude from the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore, Maryland in 1966 and received a master's degree from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in 1968. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Grant in 1974, and in addition to her two RAiR residencies, participated in a one-year residency with the National Studio Grant, MoMA P.S.1/the Clocktower in New York City in 1981. Jean has shown with Hill’s Gallery and the Linda Durham Gallery in Santa Fe, New Mexico; and with the Kornblee Gallery, the Westbeth Gallery and the Carter Burden Gallery in New York City. Her work is in the collections of the Museum of Albuquerque in New Mexico, The Fine Arts Museum of New Mexico and AMOCO in Houston Texas. She had over twenty solo exhibitions and contributed to approximately fifty group and duo exhibitions during her lifetime.

“My work is “abstract”, though non-objective, it’s atmosphere, subtlety of color and process orientation is evocative of land, sea and sky.  Though I use the most traditional of formats:  canvas, oil paint and the wood stretcher (and acrylic paint), there are some ideas that are better served by the use of non-traditional formats e.g.: I had abandoned the stretcher in earlier work, desiring to create physical texture as well as a painting that was physically flowing.

In the eighties I resumed working with the stretched canvas, seeking a gritty beauty and eventually rekindling my original focus on process -- process of a contemplative nature for itself.  A growing love of paper and the use of paper is now as important to me -- its diversity an element to use for itself and not just as a painting support. Its immediacy in communicating emotion has made paper an expressive tool for me.  My latest paper piece (145 Pieces of Paper:  Memorial to Extinct Wildlife) consists of 145 bits of torn paper each brushed with a single stroke and then mounted on 12 (8 ½ by 12) sheets and then again on a single sheet (52 by 32).  It clearly shows my attachment to non-western art, looking much like a hanging scroll. 

At present I am inclusive of the traditional and non-traditional, all that fulfills my involvement with non-western art, which stimulates gestures towards the manifestation of mind, spirit and heart. 

Though my approaches are diverse my signature is atmospheric and subtle paint: evocation of the contemplative.”

—Jean Promutico 2006