10.26.2024 – 12.21.2024

Gail Factor
Emotional Alchemy

NOON Projects is honored to present “Emotional Alchemy,” a solo exhibition featuring a selection of abstract landscapes by Gail Factor, drawn from her extensive career spanning over five decades.

Gail Factor (1942–2013) was a pioneering painter whose landscapes were deeply inspired by her surroundings in Carmel, California, the Big Sur Peninsula, and later, Santa Fe, New Mexico. Her oeuvre reflects distinct periods shaped by personal experiences, the natural world, and significant historical events.

In the 1960s, Factor studied painting and drawing at the University of Southern California, where her signature artistic style began to emerge. An emotive and introspective artist, she channeled her observations and reflections into her abstract work, using painting and drawing as a medium to process profound personal and societal emotions.

Throughout her life, Factor’s practice navigated various phases marked by relationships, wars, her physical location, and internal challenges, translating these experiences into vibrant, transcendent canvases.
“Emotional Alchemy” features a selection of small pastel drawings created in the 1960s during her time at the University of Southern California. Inspired by a burgeoning community of mid-century artists in Los Angeles, these pieces depict her developing artistic style and mark the beginning of her exploration into non-representation.

Factor's unique approach to abstraction draws from a rich tapestry of influences. In 1963, she was awarded a fellowship to study in Europe, absorbing classical painting, Impressionism, and the emerging post-war abstraction movement. Back in California, she worked alongside the artists of the Bay Area Figurative Movement of the 1950s and '60s, among contemporaries Richard Diebenkorn and Henri Villierme. Upon relocating to Santa Fe, she became part of the artistic lineage of luminaries like Georgia O'Keeffe and members of the Transcendental Painting Group.

"Emotional Alchemy" highlights significant periods in Factor's 50-year career, showcasing her evolution from early pastels in the 1960s to pieces inspired by the Gulf War and her expansive work in Santa Fe. While her paintings primarily focus on landscapes, they were not created en plein air but instead emerged from her inner landscape, reflecting emotional depth and transcendence. Factor's career is defined by distinct periods and styles, yet her distinctive hand and approach to abstraction remains constant. Factor’s paintings transform the splendor and complexity of the human experience into something beautiful and sublime, inviting viewers to explore and immerse themselves in her vision of heaven and earth

Exhibition

Opening
October 26, 2024
6–9 PM

On View Through December 21, 2024