Opening Reception: April 4, 6-8pm

While our scheduled exhibition for Ryoko Endo and Chris Hayman has been postponed, their new body of works are currently available for viewing online.

Ryoko Endo was born into a traditional family in Fukushima, Japan and attended a Catholic mission school. As a child, her mother encouraged her to wear a glove on her dominant left hand so that she would learn to use her right, as it was thought that left-handed children brought shame onto a family. Because of this experience, she can equally paint with both hands. Upon moving to New York City in 1994, one of her instructors was second-generation Abstract Expressionist painter Kikuo Saito. Saito inspired her to create colorful abstract paintings, which continues to be her focus today. Endo’s paintings explore the union between color and movement. She pursues the possibilities of various color combinations, which convey emotion. The way she moves each element empowers her paintings, and brushstrokes vary according to speed, thickness, density, and rhythm.

Ryoko Endo studied graphic design and typography at Musashino Art University in Tokyo and then furthered her studies in painting at the Art Students League, NY. She has exhibited extensively throughout New York in both solo and group exhibitions and in 2015 she received a Trudy and Henry Gillette Painting scholarship.

Chris Hayman creates paintings with vivid contrasting color and thick painterly textures. She is interested in how the painted forms are energized by the space around them. Inspired by the natural world, she believes in a process of constant investigation. Trained early on as a classical pianist, Hayman has been greatly influenced by music, which is constant in her studio. She most readily identifies with the Lyrical Abstraction movement, characterized by the movement of brushstroke and generous applications of paint, creating paintings that moved away from geometric, hard-edge, minimal styles toward a more sensuous fluid abstractions worked in a loose gestural style.

Chris Hayman was born in New York City. She received her BA in Art History at the University of Maryland and a second degree in Art Education at the University of Reno, Nevada where she started her investigation in painting. Hayman has had a continuous exhibition history, showing in galleries throughout the country, most notably in Washington, DC; Boston, MA; New Orleans, LA; Park City, UT; Dallas, TX; and Houston, TX, among others. Her work is included in the numerous private and corporate collections.