Hey Friends,
I’m writing you a note on this Thursday Painting series of emails to let you know that my painting Spiritual Anatomies, is currently exhibited (and for sale!) at Looking: 21 Ways, an exhibition curated by Rudy Vavra at Tyte Gallery. I am delighted that Vavra selected this specific painting for this exhibition, as this is a work that helped me bridge the public-facing and the private parts of my studio practice (read more about it below!). It makes sense to me then that this painting would come out of my home-studio walls to be sold by an art gallery and then go on to live in some other place!
Writer Tatiane S. Santa Rosa, in her text for the exhibition, aptly described: “Women read nature and create mythologies: (…) In Debora Faccion Grodzki’s Spiritual Anatomies (Cosmic Flowers), it is not only the symbol but also the soul that materializes in circles, breasts, and marks of wholeness.”
And here is the short text I wrote to accompany the painting in the exhibition:
Spiritual Anatomies is part of a series of works titled Cosmic Flowers, which carries a making process that begins with a group of people painting together and finishes with my practice alone in the studio. The first phase of making happened at Open Studio Practices I carried out at the Soil Factory (Ithaca, NY) to create space for communal art-making. From the large canvases painted with others, I extracted smaller pieces on which I identified specific gestures that could become forms. This series aims to unveil forms that situate a painting as an individual meditative space, still cultivating the presence of a collectivity. In Spiritual Anatomies, the form that emerges shows two polarities connected through an external line. They suggest physical or spiritual dualities that, when bridged, can complement each other, such as the body and the soul, the brain and the heart, the eye and the stomach.
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The practice of writing alongside painting can’t be rushed, so I have realized that I can’t currently keep up with one email every Thursday. Yet, I’ve been writing and updating my website/Substack as I can without sending out emails, so there are a couple of texts I could point you to if you wish to read more of what I’ve been doing.
Cyclical Movements Around the Heart
In March this year (2025), I did an artwork inside the Art Share container that I initiated at the Soil Factory in 2024, titled “Coração.” This artwork is a continuation of 'Food For The Spirit,' whi…
Building an Autotheory on the Necessity of Art
The movement toward meeting our necessities is a cyclical work of recognition, a recurrent effort to identify what truly matters at the present time to build a better future. History provides us with…
As always, thank you for being here in this online space with me. It is heartwarming to know you read my emails — if you wish to, you can answer me by hitting reply!
Abraços,
Debora