Jody Guralnick – As Close As Breath

Nancy Hoffman Gallery opens the season with paintings by Jody Guralnick exploring microscopic networks of fungi, lichens, and mosses through textured, large-scale relief. About Nancy Hoffman Gallery is pleased to open the season with an exhibition of recent paintings by artist Jody Guralnick. The artist's work brings the complex, microscopic, and often overlooked networks of the natural world into vivid, large-scale relief. Guralnick's practice operates at the vital intersection of contemporary art, ecological taxonomy, and citizen science. Her heavily textured compositions explore the intricate, symbiotic structural systems of the "Fifth Kingdom"—focusing intensely on mosses, lichens, molds, and the branching hyphal threads of fungal mycelium. Using a rich, tactile application of acrylic impasto, the artist renders these lacy, baroque configurations in bas-relief against deep, luminous oil backgrounds that evoke a complex natural palette. "As muses go, yeast, mold, mushrooms, and lichen have a lot to offer," Guralnick notes. "When fungus grows, it casts these lacy mycelial threads. It's so baroque and over the top." The artist's unique visual language is deeply informed by her immersion in environmental observation. After spending nearly a decade navigating the creative community of New York City in the late 1970s and early 1980s—where her work originally repurposed urban detritus and city collage—Guralnick relocated to Aspen, Colorado in the mid-1980s. This geographic shift transformed her practice. Finding that the forest floor contained its own rich archive of "litter," she began a lifelong dedication to scientific field study, eventually becoming a Master Naturalist specializing in lichen with the Forest Conservancy in Aspen. While the canvases are not literal botanical illustrations or portraits of her physical collections, they serve as a powerful conceptual springboard. Her studio—overflowing with gathered mushrooms, bark, and lichen specimens—acts as a laboratory where natural systems are observed and translated. Through her paintings, the microscopic building blocks of nature become macro-level metaphors for ecological connectivity, memory, and the fragility of a planet undergoing rapid climatic shifts. As Guralnick states: "By using both the tools of science and art I hope to explicate a time and place in three dimensions, a time and place that is rapidly undergoing climatic change, social change, change at the human level and change planet wide. My work is about dissection and classification in order to transform, to disrupt in order to know... I try to work at the point where two worlds touch; where there is a call, and a response." About the Artist Jody Guralnick was born January 16, 1953 in Boston, Mass. She currently lives and works in Aspen, Colorado. After study at the Boston Museum School of Fine Arts, she received her BA from St. Martin's School of Art, London in 1975, and her MFA from Pratt Institute in 1978. She has had numerous residencies, among them at the American Academy in Rome, and in New York at the Bio Art Residency, School of Visual Arts Bio Lab. She is the recipient of a Ford Foundation Grant, a Visual Arts Fellowship from the Colorado Council on the Arts, and the American Academy in Rome Visiting Artist Fellowship. She has had numerous exhibitions at various galleries in Aspen, Colorado and has been shown in many museum exhibitions including the Museum of Contemporary Art, Denver; Aspen Art Museum, Aspen; The Denver Botanic Gardens, Denver; The Hudson River Museum, Riverdale, NY; and the National Art Museum of China, Beijing. She frequently shares her practice through educational tours in the Rocky Mountains and teaching intensives at the Anderson Ranch Arts Center. Read more Toggle Painting Mixed media