Elizabeth Malaska

Like Honey Among Thorns

January 4 - February 10, 2024

Opening Reception: “First Thursday,” January 4, 6-8pm
Artist talk: “Saturday After”, January 20 at noon

Greg Kucera Gallery is pleased to announce our first one-person exhibition by Portland, OR artist, Elizabeth Malaska. Licking Honey Among Thorns is exhibited in conjunction with the artist’s solo museum exhibition, All Be Your Mirror, at Seattle Art Museum through June 16, 2024.

Malaska creates vignettes which respond to Western painting’s and art history’s use of the feminine form. In these works on paper, the artist presents her Feminist perspective in confrontational and theatrical tableaux. A model poses for an artist while an Afghan Hound stares out at the viewer. In THE STORM, a horse trots through the square from Tintoretto’s DISCOVERY OF THE BODY OF SAINT MARK. In KNEELING GODDESS, a contorted female figure appears confined by the edges of the picture plane.

Elizabeth Malaska, Like Honey Among Thorns, installation view of exhibition at Greg Kucera Gallery, 2024

“Painting’s histories overwhelmingly include the figure, most often the female figure as Object-to-Be-Visually-Consumed. In addition to being a way to process sensations and personal/collective experiences, I see my work with the figure as a profound opportunity to acknowledge and engage painting’s pasts while also imagining and postulating more just, complex, and dynamic futures. I center femme and female figures in my paintings, actively working to foreground and disrupt histories of objectification, making space for a more whole and liberated subject.“
–Elizabeth Malaska

Work in exhibition