An exhibition of oil paintings by Reading artist Jill Skaist is viewing through Oct. 30 at the Jewish Cultural Center in Wyomissing. The artist is displaying about two dozen works that encompass four decades of production.
A life member of the Art Students League, Skaist also studied at the School of Visual Arts, both in New York City, while receiving her degrees in art history and fine arts from the University of Pennsylvania. She was born in Berks County and moved to New York City, returning to Reading 36 years later to help her parents. Since that move, she has been her about 10 years.
The earlier paintings, such as an untitled work from 1981, have a comical, almost satirical look to them that distorts her subject’s faces into semimanic characterizations of line, color and composition. Many are concocted from her imagination.
Her later pieces are informed with fluid brushwork, solidly drawn features and an occasional story line embedded with text, such as the socially reflective “An Apple.” This small but complex work depicts a woman flirtatiously eating an apple on the left side of the painting. A young boy in rags can be seen with an open hand. The words “seduction” and “starvation” are written between them.
Acknowledging an artist from Reading’s past, a closeup portrait of William Baziotes shows the acclaimed painter in a contemplative pose in black and sepia, a hand placed at his right cheek. Another piece, “It was disturbing because she was wearing a pair of rubber gloves,” tells a story about a fragment of conversation overheard publicly. Other pieces reference topics of aging, civil war and gossip, investing each with conviction and personal meaning.
She has a strong color sense that joins well with her drawing style to provide the content and continuity among the 40 years of painting. These unusual yet socially charged narratives, analogies and portraits of people are both serious and playful in their approach.