Anne Buckwalter & Julia Policastro

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Rule Breakers/Story Makers is an exhibition by two women who reimagine history painting, allegory, and narratives. Anne Buckwalter and Julia Policastro borrow and redraw imagery deeply rooted in visual history for their own story-making endeavors. Buckwalter's scenes stage caution and challenges in response to accepted social and gender constructs, while Policastro's crafted spaces provide an armature for impending (or completed) mischief-making and bizarre adoration. As rule breakers, Buckwalter embraces a quizzical attitude to investigate expectations of human behavior and societal perceptions of women, while Policastro turns understood, well-worn painting tropes on end by sourcing historically situated icons and architecture as a foundation for her own invented fictions.

Obsessive attention to detail and to object-making connects these artists, as their content develops through a meditative and felt relationship with process: Buckwalter meticulously constructs obscured narratives that lend themselves to a critical examination (and possible restructuring) of patriarchal systems with her focus being on empowered women in matriarchal form. Policastro evokes an uncanny sensibility in her wryly painted scenes, charged with comedic and theatrical suspense. Both artists leave the viewer with myriad possibilities for interpreting the complexities and implications embedded within their works.