WESTWOOD GALLERY NYC presents Mark Makers, an exhibition of paintings and works on paper by Inger Johanne Grytting (b. 1949) and James Juthstrom (1925-2007), two New York-based artists of Nordic heritage engaged in the practice of mark-making. Unbounded by the limitations imposed by representation, both artists use repetitive gestural marks to express personal truths stemming from intuition and impulse. The exhibition is curated by James Cavello and will be on view November 7, 2024 – January 4, 2025.

Mark-making is an artistic practice defined by its indexical relationship to energy and movement and is best characterized by its intuitive, impulsive rhythm. Experiencing these abstract works is like seeing handwriting in a diary and directly sensing the deep personal energy communicated through the artists’ gestures. Mark Makers showcases artworks balanced between the unconscious and the intentional, revealing true and vulnerable portraits of these two artists.

Inger Johanne Grytting’s twelve post-minimal drawings and paintings on view display affinities with both Minimalism and Abstract Expressionism, although neither genre properly encapsulates her method or practice. Rather, the artist describes her process as “a probing inwards” through which “emotions and insights are translated into graphic expressions.”

James Juthstrom similarly fills his hypnotic artworks with a sense of his own energy and presence. The paintings and works on paper on view were created during a period between the late 1970s and 80s when the artist was consumed by the practice of mark-making. Working out of his Broome Street loft, Juthstrom dedicated months–sometimes years–to building layer upon layer of shimmering pigments, cryptic patterns, hatch marks, and small rings. These rings, created with Q-tips in lieu of brushes, were the result of years of experimentation with various unconventional tools to create the “perfect hand-painted circle.”

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Inger Johanne Grytting (b. 1949) was born and raised in Svolvær, Norway, a small island town on the Lofoten archipelago. In 1972, Grytting moved to the Bowery in New York City, where she studied art at The City College of New York. She was guided by her friend and mentor Jan Groth (1938-2022) who introduced her to the New York art scene. In addition to her art practice, Grytting was the art director of Fiction Magazine for over forty years, where she connected international writers and visual artists. Grytting’s artwork is exhibited internationally and collected by museums and private collections.

James Juthstrom (1925-2007) was an American artist who was born in the Bronx to a Finnish immigrant family. James Juthstrom studied at the Brooklyn Museum Art School under Bill Kienbusch (Modernist painter, 1914-1980) and Reuben Tam (American Landscape painter, 1916-1991). Following his initial success in the 1950s, he traveled around the country, visiting the Hawaiian Islands, the mountains of Southern California, and the highlands of the Southeast. When he returned to New York in 1965, he leased the top floor of an abandoned, burnt out brownstone loft building in SoHo on Broome Street, where he lived and worked for 50 years creating paintings, drawings, etchings, and sculpture ranging from abstract to figurative.