YVETTE MOLINA
Molina approaches her paintings with the precision and curiosity of an 18th century botanist, training her eye on both the cultivated and the spontaneous, improbable eruptions of plant life she encounters in her urban environment. While her paintings come from detailed observations of the natural world, it is important to recognize that the objects or spaces were first chosen, then isolated, and finally painted. Where there was a streetlight, a building, or telephone wire, Molina chooses not to look, not to memorialize. In these omissions the paintings aspire to portraiture; isolating the subject in order that it might fully occupy our attention as a marker of nostalgia and reverence.

In each piece more than 30 layers of oil paint are applied to aluminum panels that are mounted on an inset wooden frame creating a luminous surface that appears to float between the wall and the viewer. Inspired by the compressed palette of Chinese landscape paintings, her use of color is muted. Shrouded layers of cloud, mist, and sky create an indeterminate space, a place of reflection.

ABOUT YVETTE MOLINA
Yvette Molina was born in 1972 in Kansas City, KS, and studied painting at the University of Dayton, Ohio, Norfolk Institute of Art and Design, Norfolk, England, and Ecole des Beaux Arts, Angers, France. Molina's work has been garnering steady praise since she began exhibiting in 1997. She has been recognized with an Artist-in-Residence Fellowship at the Legion of Honor/de Young Art Center, and in the spring of 2005, was chosen by Rene de Guzman and Meredith Tromble for inclusion in ArtSpan's biennial Selections exhibition. Her work is in collections throughout the U.S. and Europe. She resides in Oakland, CA.