ABLOOM
Emmi Whitehorse
            










Abloom is an exhibition catalog published by Garth Greenan Gallery, which celebrates the gallery’s first solo exhibition of the artist. The catalog features an interview between Whitehorse and fellow artist Jaune Quick-to-See Smith.

From the publisher:
“My paintings tell the story of knowing land over time—of being completely, microcosmically within a place,” says Whitehorse of her enigmatic compositions. The works often draw on the Southwestern landscape as a source of inspiration. Plantlike forms float beside elemental shapes like spirals, gentle curves, and gestural marks. In Whitehorse’s recent works like Abloom (2024), the vaporous substrates shift across multiple hues, from deep violet and stormy gray, to warm ochres and reds. At times, the diffuse and shifting substrates populated with diverse organic forms appear like droplets of seawater, teeming with microscopic life. At other times, the gradual fluctuations in light seem to drift across the canvas like the cloud-cast shadows across a landscape. Deliberately meditative and slow, these paintings register fleeting sensory perceptions and subtle shifts in light, space, and color—the central axes around which the artist’s work has evolved.

Throughout her career, Whitehorse’s longstanding commitment to beauty and peace has its origins in the Navajo philosophy Hózhó, which seeks to achieve a harmonious balance of life, mind, and body with nature. The meditative and tranquil qualities in her work are anything but incidental: Whitehorse avoids painting when in turbulent moods, lest they transfer to her paintings. The expansive diptych included in the exhibition, Chaco (2024), measures over 10 feet across. The canvas is packed with organic forms suspended in an infinite ether. The dense, dynamic thicket of life, however, is serene. As in nature, the many linear shapes observe a gentle vertical orientation, giving the composition an impression of loose, organic order.