The PoetsArtists publication and exhibition project, entitled Painting the Figure Now, seeks to highlight skill-based painting that investigates the many ways contemporary artists see the human figure in all genres, such as portraiture, narrative, nudes, and any and all visualizations focusing on the human form in life, action, play, work, and repose. The human body is an inexhaustible subject within the arts, potentially allowing us to see humanity in fresh, relevant, and innovative ways.

Chief curator for Painting the Figure Now 2019 is Didi Menendez, and guest curators include John Dalton, Victoria Selbach, Barry Blinderman, Jay Menendez, Daniel Maidman, and I. All work will be published in PoetsArtists Magazine, and a selection will be exhibited at the Zhou B Art Center in Chicago, Illinois, and/or the Wausau Museum of Contemporary Art in Wausau, Wisconsin.

My goal, as guest curator of the PoetsArtists’ Painting the Figure Now 2019, was to select artists who paint the human body by means of exceptional pictorial skills as well as having a distinctly individual look to their work. I invited figure painters Amanda Grieve, Daryl Zang, Natalie Holland, and Laura Tan to submit.

On International Women’s Day, observed on March 8th 2019, the European Museum of Modern Art—better known as the MEAM — inaugurated the exhibition Painting Today / Pintando Hoy curated by PoetsArtists publisher Didi Menendez.

Painting Today shows over 70 artworks by female artists of many different ethnic origins, hailing from north, south, and central America, Oceania, and Europe. Some are emerging artists, others have reached the pinnacle of their careers. Nineteen of us were lucky enough to have the time and means to travel to Barcelona to go to the well-attended opening ceremony at this beautiful and important museum, founded by its director, José Manuel Infiesta—a true gentleman, an indefatigable visionary, a lover of strong figurative art.