Vivid and broad brushstrokes streak across Nicole Wittenberg’s paintings currently on view at the newly opened Los Angeles gallery, Fernberger. The exhibition, titled “Jumpin’ at The Woodside,” marks Wittenberg’s first solo show in Los Angeles and the debut of her new body of landscape works.

Building from her plein-air studies, Wittenberg’s paintings utilize broad and gestural brushstrokes that render her landscapes less Courbet in style than Sérusier or Vuillard. In place of visual depth, Wittenberg’s works prioritize movement—of both the forms she depicts and of the viewer’s eye. In Strawberry Moon (2023)—a painting of two trees flocking the moon and its reflection on water—the sloping branches of the trees guide your gaze inwards towards both the moon and the leaves of one another. Yet their trunks, which lean into the canvas’s corners, pull your eye upwards and outwards, letting you imagine them growing out of the frame.

Nicole Wittenberg, Midsummer Morning 2, 2023. Courtesy of Fernberger Gallery.

The (often) lack of a singular punctum combined with the expressive, abstracted forms forces viewers to take in the whole expanse of the painting and give greater appreciation to Wittenberg’s palette. Her combination of deep browns, greens, and blues is contrasted with the bright orange that emanates from beneath each layer. Midsummer Morning 2 (2023) features two trees, one in the foreground and one in the background, set against a flowered landscape. Like Strawberry Moon, the trees of Midsummer Morning 2 pull the viewer through the painting, the background one growing diagonally until it appears to merge into the other. A blackened sky gives the painting a foreboding effect, not so much gloomy or sinister than anticipatory. Peeping through the gaps in the brushstrokes is a vibrant, neon orange—a color Wittenberg uses frequently as a wash in her painting’s backgrounds. The effect gives her works a temporal ambiguity (though often clarified in her titles).

Nicole Wittenberg, Pieces 2, 2024. Courtesy of Fernberger Gallery.

While the orange is less apparent in Pieces 2 (2024), Wittenberg is still able to imbue the painting with a fleeting sense of time by relying on wide, seeping shapes. Abstracted forms flow across the canvas, forming a languid and indistinguishable landscape of blues, purples and pinks, that appear to be either sky, water or something entirely different.

As Fernberger’s inaugural show, Wittenberg’s exhibition is a vivid and exciting tease at what’s to come for both the artist and the gallery.

Nicole Wittenberg: Jumpin’ at the Woodside
Fernberger Gallery
747 N Western Avenue
Los Angeles, CA 90029