On the Painting Porch, at BAYarts

Marianne Berardi, Roses and Wisteria, Gouache on panel. Berardi and Cathie Bleck’s exhibition, The Painting Porch, opens at BAYarts in April.

In July 2019, dear friends Cathie Bleck and Marianne Berardi casually decided to paint in Cathie’s large back porch amid her flourishing garden, while juggling the complexity of events happening in their own lives. It was not a preconceived idea or a project, or even meant to yield something that would be exhibited. It was something they enjoyed, and found meaning in; and without having “production” as the goal, the work began to add up. Marianne is a full-time art historian and serves as a senior specialist and consignment director for American and European Art at Heritage Auctions in Dallas, Texas. She studied art as an undergraduate and received a doctorate in art history. Marianne reviews thousands of paintings on a weekly basis, determining authenticity and evaluating them for the current art market, but she has never exhibited her personal work. Cathie, on the other hand, is a professional artist. She had a long career as a successful illustrator for over thirty years, before moving her art practice to focusing on her personal work: explorations using liquid kaolin clay and inks as her mediums. Cathie published a monograph of her work and exhibits her mixed media paintings internationally.

They both stepped aside from their normal experiences with art and began exploring what was directly in front of them—in the moment. The two friends developed personal visual journals by first painting their gardens, and then extending that same approach outside of their back yards—painting what was right in front of them, wherever life took them, over the course of two years, including the period of the pandemic. The work that resulted is an intimate glimpse into friendship and personal spaces; into daily visual exercises influenced by events in nature, both large and small; and into a fascinating dialogue between two different sensibilities, who critiqued each other’s work as each piece evolved.