Philip Martin Gallery is proud to present, “Abstraction, People and Landscape,” a group exhibition featuring the work of Holly Coulis, Tomory Dodge, Tim Garwood, Jackie Gendel and Christy Matson. These five artists consider abstraction as a means by which to think about people and landscape as motif.
Holly COULIS’s work draws on portraiture, landscape and still-life to construct a terminology of line, color, shape, touch and paint materiality. Coulis invites the viewer into a conversation with the terms of the art object. Writing on Swiss master Paul Klee, British artist Bridget Riley notes, “Every painter starts with elements - lines, colors, forms - that are essentially abstract in relation to the pictorial experience that can be created with them.”
Tomory DODGE’s work explore mechanics of picture-making. His paintings have a deep sense of pictorial space, built initially on patterns of stripes and shapes, over which he lays in a network of expressive brushwork, dots and lines. The result is a pictorially engaged surface of striking color combinations and active mark-making. “I have often talked about paintings being inherently contradictory things. They are objects that are spaces, walls that are windows. They are the intersection of object and image. Painting maintains a physical anchor at a time when the image generally is becoming more and more ethereal — everywhere and nowhere at the same time."
Tim GARWOOD’s work engages with abstraction as a mode of personal expression. His paintings foreground a deep engagement with urban and rural environs and reflect the ways in which we live today, often standing with our feet in multiple worlds. The compositional energy, dynamic color and rich texture of Garwood’s work derives in part from the feeling of London and rural Somerset. In Garwood’s practice, “there are no obstacles between abstraction and association, improvisation, and control, only the endless exploration, transformative capabilities and potential possibilities of painting itself.” Garwood himself points to the power of looking and responding: “I am happy to allow myself to follow spontaneous thoughts and accept that occasionally that takes me in unexpected directions.”
Jackie GENDEL’s pictures address the female figure while at the same time exploring pattern, collage-space and color. “I try to get to a place that is unexpected to me,” Jackie Gendel writes. Working with an eye towards both art history and contemporary visual culture, the loose, interpretative feeling of Gendel’s paintings not only engages our sense of the world today, but also reminds us of pieces by major Modernists such as Sonia Delaunay, Hannah Höch, Sophie Taeuber-Arp, Liubov Popova and Varvara Stepanova. “I paint people because the process of painting a portrait is similar to identity formation...the materials, the spills, the language, tells me who this person is becoming.” Gendel’s direct mark-making plays off the subtle atmospheres she creates, back-stopping her gestured brushwork with flows of liquid color.
Christy MATSON’s woven, wall-mounted works combine the skill, sensitivity and craft of painting and hand weaving with the artist-directed process of an industrial Jacquard loom. The result is an art object of beauty and depth that reveals important details with regard to art objects, how we make them, and how we look at them. Matson begins her process with watercolors, ink drawings, collages and other works on paper. She then uses a digital process to translate these compositions into instructions her loom can understand, and, as she works the machine, improvises on the weft (horizontal rows) with creativity and nuance.
Holly COULIS (b. 1968, Toronto, Canada) received her BFA from Ontario College of Art and Design (Toronto, Canada) in 1995 and her MFA from School of the Museum of Fine Arts (Boston, MA) in 1998. Holly Coulis’s recent solo and group exhibitions include Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Klaus von Nichtssagend Gallery (New York, NY); Kasmin Gallery (New York, NY); Thailand Biennale, Pimamthip Art Gallery (Pak Chong District, Nakhon Ratchasima Province); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); Simon Lee (London, UK); Cooper Cole (Toronto, Canada); University of Georgia (Athens, GA); Atlanta Contemporary (Atlanta, GA); Massachusetts College of Art and Design (Boston, MA); SARDINE Gallery (Brooklyn, NY); Paramó Gallery (Guadalajara, Mexico); El Museo de los Pintores Oaxaqueños (Oaxaca, Mexico); Galleria d’Art Moderna (Milan, Italy); The Bruce High Quality Foundation (New York, NY); and Leo Koenig (New York, NY). Coulis’ work is included in the collections of the Blanton Museum of Art (Austin, TX); Fidelity Investments (Boston, MA); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); OZ Art Northwest Arkansas (Bentonville, AR); Rollins College (Orlando, FL); and UT Southwestern Medical Center (Dallas, TX). Her work has been reviewed in publications such as Artforum, Art in America, Los Angeles Times, The New York Times, Flaunt Magazine, Hyperallergic, and FT Magazine. Coulis lives and works in Athens, GA.
Tomory DODGE (b. 1974, Denver, CO) received his BFA from Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI) and his MFA from California Institute of the Arts (Valencia, CA) in 2004. Tomory Dodge’s recent and upcoming solo and group exhibitions include “Newfoundland and Back,” “Hair into Gold and Back Again,” and “Pocket Universe,” Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Miles McEnery Gallery (New York, NY); LUX Art Institute (Encinitas, CA); “Stranger Than Paradise,” Rhode Island School of Design Museum (Providence, RI); “Grafforists,” Torrance Art Museum (Torrance, CA); “Nowism,” Pizzuti Collection (Columbus, OH); “An Appetite For Painting,” National Museum (Oslo, Norway); “Pouring It On,” Herter Art Gallery, University of Massachusetts (Amherst, MA); “Directions to a Dirty Place,” Southeastern Center for Contemporary Art (Winston-Salem, NC); “Future Tense: Reshaping the Landscape,” Neuberger Museum of Art (Purchase, NY); “American Soil,” Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); and Sheldon Memorial Gallery, University of Nebraska (Lincoln, NE). Dodge’s work is in the collections of such museums as Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Los Angeles, CA); Orange County Museum of Art (Newport Beach, CA); San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, (San Francisco, CA); Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive (Berkeley, CA); Henry Art Gallery (Seattle, WA); Dallas Museum of Art (Dallas, TX); Nerman Museum of Contemporary Art (Overland Park, KS); Weisman Art Museum (Minneapolis, MN); Minneapolis Institute of Art (Minneapolis, MN); Orlando Museum of Art (Orlando, FL); Knoxville Museum of Art (Knoxville, TN); Abroms Engel Institute for the Visual Arts at the University of Alabama at Birmingham (Birmingham, AL); Weatherspoon Art Museum (Greensboro, NC); Smithsonian American Art Museum (Washington, DC); RISD Museum, Rhode Island School of Design (Providence, RI); Yale University Art Gallery (New Haven, CT); and Whitney Museum of American Art (New York, NY). Dodge’s work is the subject of several monographic catalogs and has been discussed in such publications as Artforum, Flash Art, Modern Painters, Art Review, Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times. Dodge lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
Jackie GENDEL (b. 1973, Houston, TX) received a BA from Washington University in St. Louis (St. Louis, MO) and an MFA from Yale University (New Haven, CT). Jackie Gendel’s recent and upcoming exhibitions include “Recreation Myths,” at Redwood Library & Anthæum (Newport, RI), and “The Architect’s Daughters,” at Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Inman Gallery (Houston, TX); SOCO Gallery (Charlotte, NC); and Thomas Erben Gallery (New York, NY). Gendel’s work is included in the collections of Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (Hartford, CT); and Progressive Collection (Mayfield Village, OH). Gendel has been featured in publications such as Artforum, The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art in America, Hyperallergic, Modern Painters, and Art Papers. The American Academy of Arts and Letters awarded her an Academy Award in 2007. She participated in the Marie Walsh Sharpe Space Program in 2010 and was an artist-in-residence at the MacDowell Colony in 2005. Gendel’s early work derived from her background in underground comics, a medium of “sequential image” storytelling, which she drew in the late ’90s for an upstart feminist webzine for teenage girls. Gendel lives and works in Providence, RI.
Tim GARWOOD (b, 1984, Epsom, UK) was recently the subject of “Wave to the Wind” and “A Green Place” at Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA). Tim Garwood’s work has been seen in solo and group exhibitions at Sim Smith (London, UK); Lyndsey Ingram (London, UK); Denny Gallery (Hong Kong); Arario Gallery (Shanghai, China); Rich Mix (London, UK); Combustión Espontánea (Madrid, Spain); Unit 1 Gallery (London, UK). Tim Garwood’s work has recently been featured in the Art Newspaper and Then There Were Us. In 2020, a monograph of his work, “Abroad From Earth,” was published in the UK. Tim Garwood lives and works in London and Somerset.
Christy MATSON (b. 1979, Seattle, WA) received her BFA from the University of Washington (Seattle, WA) and her MFA from California College of the Arts (San Francisco, CA). Matson’s recent and upcoming solo and group exhibitions include, “Index Color” Philip Martin Gallery (Los Angeles, CA); Milwaukee Art Museum (Milwaukee, WI); Cranbook Museum of Art (Bloomfield Hills, MI); Long Beach Museum of Art (Long Beach, CA); “Beyond: Tapestry Expanded,” Peeler Art Center, DePauw University (Greencastle, IN); “Arcadia and Elsewhere,” James Cohan Gallery (New York, NY); “Seeing Chicago,” curated by Duro Olowu, Museum of Contemporary Art (Chicago, IL); “40 Under 40: Craft Futures,” Smithsonian Museum of American Art (Washington, DC); John Michael Kohler Art Center (Sheboygan, WI); Contemporary Arts Museum (Houston, TX); Knoxville Museum of Art (Knoxville, TN); Municipio di Maniago, (Pordenone Italy); Virginia Commonwealth University (Richmond, VA); Ciurlionis National Museum of Art (Kaunas, Lithuania); Hyde Park Art Center (Chicago, IL); Bakersfield Museum of Art (Bakersfield, CA); Craft and Folk Art Museum (Los Angeles, CA); and Museum of Craft and Folk Art (San Francisco, CA). Articles and reviews on Christy Matson’s work have appeared in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, Sculpture, Fiber Arts, Textile, Artillery, Surface Design Journal and Time Out. Matson is represented by Volume (Chicago, IL) and Rebecca Camacho Presents (San Francisco, CA). Christy Matson lives and works in Los Angeles, CA.
“Abstraction, People and Landscape” is online December 11 - 23, 2025. All works can be viewed at Philip Martin Gallery by appointment. The gallery is open Wednesday - Saturday from 11-5. For additional images, or information please email info@philipmartingallery.com, or call 323 507-2037. Philip Martin Gallery is located at 3342 Verdugo Road, Los Angeles, CA 90065.
