Boston Globe: “Expansion, Contraction, and the Space in Between,” by Cate McQuaid, September 14, 2011
“Resa Blatman’s exuberant paintings, full of flash, dazzle, and baroque flourishes, have over the years become increasingly architectural. You can lose yourself in the illusions she creates with paintings. They’re also complex structures cut out of panels, and the shape of the painting itself becomes part of the story. “Ultimate Whorl,’’ her exhibit at Ellen Miller Gallery, offers some of Blatman’s most technically virtuosic work yet.” Read more.
Art New England: “Resa Blatman,” by Mary Bucci McCoy, September/October 2011
“… The large-scale tripartite The Golden Mean is an over-the-top tour de force. Insects and animals break free of the support, forming a cloud. White swirls and loops painted on the surface echo cutout forms. Blatman’s fertile painting of bats, insects, berries, grapes, webs, and abstracted bunches is at its most complex. It’s easy to imagine such a piece failing to coalesce or spinning out of control, but in her hands the many complex threads of the work resolve into a whole that retains the initmate magnetism of her smaller pieces.” Read more.
Boston Globe: “Keen Eye and Cunning Craft,” by Cate McQuaid, January 6, 2010
“… Lemon Spray is cut out of three panels, each edged with a pretty chaos of baroque curves, from which spring outlines of flowers and birds, even a kangaroo. These cast ornate shadows on the wall, and the negative space between them is curvaceously feminine. Similar flourishes fly over the surface in flat dove-white – they appear to spurt ecstatically from brawny stems – caressing gorgeously rendered, plump clusters of hanging lemons and bats.”Read more.
Boston Phoenix: “2009: The Year in Art,” by Greg Cook, December 25, 2009
“Suddenly last year, Resa Blatman’s sultry paintings of birds and flowers amid Art Nouveau arabesques seemed sharper, lusher. The key was the Somerville artist’s switch to painting on rectangular PVC panels with her patterns jigsawed out of the edges. This technique wove the decoration throughout the composition, and it put her subject into focus: the birds and the bees. She moved on to asymmetrical panels for Tufts University’s annual juried exhibition this summer and then a Suffolk University Art Gallery show (up through January 17). As the work gets more curvy, it becomes ever more ravishing.” Read more.
James Hull, Director of the Suffolk University Art Gallery, December 2009
“… Avoiding a specific narrative, Blatman creates an overall feeling and then reinforces it at every opportunity by her selection of decorative shapes, animals, insects, fungi and fruits that exude a disneyesque sexualized beauty. Blatman uses flat graphic design strategies to tease us screening but not hiding the graphic content. The overt references to pendulous anatomy are disguised by an equally valid reading as a luscious, dimensional fruit, avoiding any pornographic directness. Resa Blatman’s technical skill coupled with her decisions on how to depict the juicy, physicality of desire, the dramatic gestures of romance and the thriving abundance of life is the unexpected power of these works. The result is an over-the-top cornucopia combining the emotive dynamism of Baroque decoration, contemporary patterning like that of Philip Taaffe and the curvaceous sexuality of Georgia O’Keefe in a single painting.” Read more.
Boston Phoenix: “Breakthroughs,” by Greg Cook, July 10, 2009
“… The payoff is the inclusion of two Somerville artists who have made breakthroughs in the past couple of years: Resa Blatman and Raúl González (who is a friend of mine). Both are ripe for major one-person shows — like, say, an ICA “Momentum” exhibit.” Read more.
Boston Globe: “Danforth showcases region’s best,” by Denise Taylor, June 2009
“… Newer artists also abound, such as Resa Blatman, whose mammoth, frilly and freaky “Beauty and the Beasties” panel (in oil, acrylic, and glitter) is a show in itself.
“Resa Blatman is definitely an artist to watch,” said [museum director Katherine] French. “Her engagement in materials is fascinating. Her work doesn’t look like anyone else’s, and she’s so ambitious in the sense that she’s trying things that nobody else is trying and she’s really succeeding.” Read more.
MyArtSpace interview by Brian Sherwin, May 2009 (read online)
New England Journal of Aesthetic Research: “Overflow,” by Greg Cook, November 2008
“… The showstopper in terms of panache and scale is Blatman’s 10-foot-wide painting Beauty and the Beasties(pictured below), a fantasia of realistically rendered wild critters and flowers cavorting among flat paisley flourishes. Bats, beetles, an ostrich, flamingos and hummingbirds float out of a dark background. A mushroom at the bottom sprays designs in an exceedingly lascivious manner. The edge of the painting is cut out in a curlicue interlace pattern of vines and leaves. Seeing Blatman’s paintings in shows over the past couple years, I’ve felt that her combo of realist wildlife imagery and flat pattern merged awkwardly. But here they’re united by shared lusty sensuous over-the-top exuberant abundance. And I’m won over.” Read more.
Boston Globe: “A curator of a different stripe,” by Cate McQuaid, November 2008
“… Blatman’s work has always had tiny biomorphic clusters fluorescing through deep space, tangling with plant life and flat, decorative embellishments. In “Beauty and the Beauties,” she ups the ante, painting on plastic foam core and laser-cutting ornate designs along the edges. Within, there’s a dazzling mix of abstraction and figuration. Fruit bats feed, pink flamingos preen; a mushroom appears to ejaculate. It’s a celebration of sensuality.” Click here to read the entire article. Read more.
Weekly Dig (Boston): November 2008 (two-page spread of Beauty and the Beasties)
Berkshire Fine Arts: “Overflow,” by Shawn Hill, October 2008
“… The over-the-top title is a perfect fit for this show that revels in sensual excess. Blatman, Hairston-Medice and O’Malley, each in their own media, are unabashedly concerned with beauty. They’re in favor of it; and of biology, and flora and fauna that reproduce themselves, and in biomorphic shapes that look like flora and fauna copulating.” Read more.
Artscope magazine: Sept-Oct 2008 (preview for Overflow)
Weekly Dig (Boston): September 11, 2008 (preview for Overflow)
Big, Red and Shiny (online art journal): September 14, 2008 (preview for Overflow)
Boston Phoenix: “Just a Little Bit,” by Randi Hopkins, September 23, 2008 (read online)
Artscope magazine: Nov-Dec 2007, page 49
Studio Art Centers International (Florence, Italy, newsletter): fall 2007, page 5
Weekly Dig (Boston): October 17, 2007, page 29 (read online)
Wheelock College magazine: Spring 2007, page 27
Somerville Art Matters (Somerville Cable Access TV), December 2006
TV show dealing with art issues in the Somerville, Massachusetts, community. The show is archived on theSomerville Art Matters blog, where you can watch Resa’s interview (she appears during the second half).
Bostonia magazine, summer 2006
Boston Globe: “Graduating Class” by Cate McQuaid, April 21, 2006
“…Blatman, who went to art school before becoming a graphic designer, has returned to her painting roots at BU. Her paintings recall the creative ferment of the primordial ooze and the precision of Dutch still lifes. They swirl with color, like dark underwater eddies shot with sunlight and bubbling like champagne. Lemons and berries cluster over the luxuriant surfaces. Flowers and plants hover, more ghostly than the fruit.” Read more.
Boston Globe: “Resa Blatman: Recent Work,” by Cate McQuaid, July 14, 2005
Resa Blatman’s paintings on exhibit at Soprafina represent a leap forward, as if the seeds she planted in her earlier work have sprouted and blossomed. Her earlier pieces aren’t on display, but you can see some of them in Soprafina’s flat files: These works on paper feature simple shapes, like seeds and boats, and are understated and elegant. In her new work, Blatman creates a sense of deep space, layering abstract forms built from intricate patterns. Often, these look like fishing nets billowing underwater.
In “Phoenix Rising,” the patterns include fronds, feathers, and fish scales, even though there are no plants, birds, or fish depicted. The patterns tangle against cool green, rising up to a burst of gold leaf at the top. “The Density of Imagination Between Us and Life” has the same green background, with sinewy white-and-red netting reaching from far away into the foreground. It’s dramatic work, and is occasionally too dramatic; Blatman could pare down some of her elements. That’s a quibble, though. Blatman is an artist on the move.”