Jo Ann Rothschild’s solo exhibition of recent paintings, “Warm to the Touch,” curated by Elizabeth Michelman, is on view at Storefront Art Projects in Watertown, MA through November 23, 2024. This is a tightly focused presenta- tion of 13 paintings, organized as an immersive and organic look at Rothschild’s masterful and intuitive painterly decision-making process.

Rothschild’s aesthetic mines her subconscious influences in a working method that engages color and a fascina- tion with mark making. Michelman, a fellow artist who has known Rothschild for many years and has written frequently about her art, said it was hard to cull just a dozen works for this show out of hundreds of paintings from Rothschild’s last 50 years of production. She settled for works of oil on canvas and linen from the last two years. One thickly- painted, predominantly yellow work dated and titled “7-3-2023,” grabs the viewer’s attention immediately in this exhibition. Michelman said, “It may take a while for viewers to see an L-shaped threshold of colored segments one looks through into more distant space. I find the color combinations and juxtapositions very daring, almost offensive. Who would paint an entire surface a blinding yellow, to begin with? It’s a powerful first step. The sloppy edges and constant rethinking/overlapping of colors challenge the viewer to read how all aspects work together in the painting.”

Other recent paintings provide a softer counterpoint with muddy-looking backgrounds, which Michelman described as, “having indefinable hues between yellow ochre, raw sienna, light yellow and light green.” These “muds” often start by Rothschild scraping the leftovers of the palette and mixing them together, then sweeping them across the canvas as a background.