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Nathanson became fascinated by color painting at Bennington College. She arrived at the school in the mid-1970s, when it was at the center of color field abstraction. From Kenneth Noland and Larry Poons, she learned to avoid composing through dark and light tones and to give color an ever-greater role in structuring a painting. Over the last four decades, she has deepened her exploration of color dynamics, seeking to transmit affective realities of seeing. She courts chaos in her method, through employing chance, but she also works methodically—each overlay of color takes a day to dry.  For the viewer, her paintings evoke energies in the body as well as optical experience, and the physical presence of each painting resists immediate assimilation, involving a dynamic, layered search for unity.

From blow pipes to aerosol paint to industrial paint compressors, artists have employed a myriad of methods to play with the forces of spray. Gagosian Gallery of London has organized a massive survey of the art form spanning four generations and a variety of mediums featuring more than 50 artists including Paul Klee, Jean-Michael Basquiet, Andy Warhol, Ed Ruscha, Takashi Murakami, Anish Kapoor, and Jeff Koons, among others.

"Gagosian is pleased to present 'Sprayed', organised by Jona Lueddeckens and Greg Bergner.

This extensive exhibition spanning four generations explores the myriad ways in which artists have employed the impulsive yet de-personalized and non-gestural forces of spray...

From the late sixties, spray assumed a new scale and level of exposure, from Dan Christensen's vast “post-painterly” abstractions—where he used a spray gun to create intersecting coloured loops of paint alive with cool-tempered energies..."

Reports of the death of painting have been greatly exaggerated. Not least, its survival is due to artists like Jill Nathanson, whose current show at Berry Campbell combines traditional approaches with new technologies to create paintings that could only have been made in the 21st century.

Jill Nathanson exhibition at Berry Campbell featured on Gallery Travels: Seen Around Town, an art blog by Annie Russinof

You can get lost in the mind of Jill Nathanson. In her captivating paintings, overlapping planes of translucent color generate expansive surfaces rich with free-form shapes.  Her ethereal compositions seem weightless in the way they evoke slow, sliding movement.  Although her abstraction is assuredly non-objective, she paints “the world of things” according to the artist herself.   Just when we’re immersed in the deep layers of polymer resin, patches of acrylic bring us back to reality. MARY NEGRO (2012)

A dozen or so canvases from 1958 to 1965 that were on view recently at Berry Campbell made it clear why Bannard, who is now eighty, was selected for these shows. Even back in the day, the emergent artist’s Minimalist compositions must have seemed timeless. These are, to be sure, smart paintings. And while it’s tempting to raise the specter of formalism today, it’s perhaps more apt to suggest that the nearly five-foot-square canvases call to mind a foreign language that’s almost been forgotten.

For me, the best paintings in “Jill Nathanson: Fluid Measure,” are, on the whole, the larger and simpler ones, those which incorporate only a limited number of colors. The most complex and ambitious of these larger ones is “In Fluence” (2014). Situated in the front space of the gallery, it has cloudy sky blues in the upper left part of the canvas, deep red sweeping on the lower left, tans in various shapes in the upper right, and greens on the lower right with touches of cream.

Berry Campbell features Post-War Modern and Contemporary art with a focus on established as well as emerging and mid-career contemporary artists.

El Gran Otro an Argentine based International Contemporary Art magazine features Berry Campbell Artist, Jill Nathanson