20x200

Butterfly Chair by Karen Barbour

The Trees Need To Be Cut Down by Karen Barbour

NYC greetings, collectors. The sweltering temperatures and pungent aromas that make our city summers so...how do you say?...special have unleashed themselves upon us. The air's staying thick with heat long after sundown, and, oh, how it lingers! I broke a sweat just walking to the gym in the early hours of the morning, long before the sun began heating the haze anew. With no end in sight, I'm pretty relieved to be heading west tomorrow evening—to wintry San Francisco. Until then, I'm extra über-appreciative of the art-filled and air-conditioned refuge of 20x200 HQ.

Speaking of California, today's editions—Butterfly Chair and The Trees Need To Be Cut Down—are by the enviably situated and awfully talented Karen Barbour. If I had a moment to spare during my upcoming sojourn, I'd gladly hotfoot it up to western Marin—in my own humble opinion, one of the most beautiful places in the whole wide world—to personally welcome Karen to the 20x200 family. But with every moment (and then some) spoken for, I extend my warmest greetings virtually, taking comfort in knowing that she fits right in among the 200-plus artists who are part of our extended family.

Figuring out where new artists fit in is an entertaining enterprise, especially with someone like Karen, whose work reminds me of a seemingly disparate array of our previous editions. The "walled gardens with enclosing hedges, boxwood hedges and bushes clipped into shapes" that Karen describes in her statement bring Beth Dow's gorgeous garden tableaux to mind. Both are interested in our oft-gone-awry attempts to reign in and order what nature has designed, although their expressions of that awry-ness manifest themselves very differently: Beth's black and white subtlety is an excellent foil for Karen's outside-the-lines depictions.

Switching media, I see a certain otherworldly kinship with Rachell Sumpter's celestial landscapes, rendered in a palette reminiscent of Matisse (updated for our century by the use of harder-edged jewel tones) and evocative of the layered backdrops of David Corbett's abstract compositions. Expanding my connection-making to artists that I hope to one day welcome into the 20x200 fold, both David Hockney and Tina Barney come to mind, with subjects and environs I see as being not-as-distant-as-you-might-think cousins to the figures and landscapes that recur throughout Karen's larger body of work.

All this artist introducing/welcoming and connection-making is the kind of thing that makes my job the funnest job ever, and I'm always on the hunt for inspiration and additions. And it occurs to me as I write to you all that one of the amplest inspirational sources is right before me, in all of you. So, dear collectors, I'll leave you with a question and eagerly await your replies: Which artists would you like to see popping up in your inbox and arriving in your mailbox?

— Jen