Burning, Growing is a two-person exhibition by Rhode Island-based Matthew Napoli and Maryland-based Julia Gould. In this Gallery 263 Exhibition Proposal Series show, oil paintings by both artists alternate between comfort and tension in order to respond to the fragility of environmental and interpersonal climates. 

Commanded by color, light, and compositions originating from natural phenomena and internal mythologies, Gould and Napoli balance tenderness with grit through metaphoric imagery. Jeweled colors create forms and spaces characterized by their luminosity. Compositions guide through circling and sweeping structures that hold safe the image and its internal meaning(s).

In Gould’s work, visions of attraction and temptation present themselves. Within her paintings, the natural world curls, expands, and pulls apart from itself, forming stages for symbolic acts. People and other animals hover and move through the landscapes, exploring the various divides and barriers between subjects and their ambitions. In “Red Fruiting, the Fall of Adam and Eve,” the two lovers occupy the central orb, suggesting that it is their temptation that makes the surrounding landscape arid. This lack of restraint is also seen in the pressing state of our environment, which is why Gould has chosen dehydration as the method of destruction for Eden. In other paintings, Gould references Venus’ shell and Narcissus’s reflection pool. While rooted in classical narratives, archetypes fall apart as personal mythology narrates the complexities of desire.

Napoli’s work takes place in psychological space, finding appreciation in our malformed ecology. Inquiries into the relationships between the growing world and our built world evidence the difficult and nebulous truths of our environment—and our spirit. Napoli’s paintings consider this beleaguered state an opportunity for innovating new avenues of caring and faith. Clustered compositions, rendered in uneasy color, magnetize the oppositional and unsettling tangles that typify the world within and without ourselves. 

The paintings in this exhibition explore the artists’ relationships with the environment, other people, and themselves. Both intimacy and detachment are evident. In Burning, Growing, Gould and Napoli present their truths through lenses forged and fractured by their own lived experiences.

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About the artists