Jill Nathanson: Chromatic Phrases Exhibit

The Vero Beach Museum of Art announced that Jill Nathanson: Chromatic Phrases, an original exhibition featuring more than 20 recent works by artist Jill Nathanson, will open July 25 and remain on view through Feb. 7, 2027.

Presented exclusively at VBMA, the exhibition explores Nathanson’s ongoing investigation of color as an experiential phenomenon. Drawing on the legacy of Color Field painting of the 1960s and 1970s, Nathanson’s abstract paintings examine how color, light and perception interact to create a sense of movement and visual change.

“The exhibition title Chromatic Phrases draws on a musical analogy to evoke the unfolding of visual experience across the surface of each painting,” said VBMA Chief Curator Caitlin Swindell. “Like a musical phrase, understood as a complete and expressive unit, each composition develops through relationships between colors as they are perceived over time.”

As visitors move through the galleries, the exhibition is designed to shift from an immediate visual impression to a deeper awareness of the optical and spatial effects Nathanson creates through color relationships.

“The colors are like strings in a string instrument — a melody on one string implicitly activates the harmonic space of the others, even if they are not played directly,” Swindell said. “Nathanson’s aim is that people will look at color and feel something.”

Central to the exhibition is Nathanson’s concept of “Color Desire,” a system of incompleteness and interdependence that shapes how pure colors relate to one another within her paintings.

“The colors in the painting call forth one another, and they need each other across the painting,” Nathanson said. More than creating an image, she seeks to generate force through the sequencing of color.

Chromatic Phrases is curated by Chief Curator Caitlin Swindell and organized by the Vero Beach Museum of Art. The exhibition will open in both the Schumann and Titelman galleries on July 25, 2026, before transitioning to the Schumann Gallery on Oct. 26, 2026.

All works on view are on loan courtesy of the artist and Berry Campbell Gallery in New York. A forthcoming catalog on Nathanson’s recent work will include an essay by Karen Wilkin.

Jill Nathanson: Chromatic Phrases is generously supported by presenting sponsors The Yela “Peter” and Derek Fowler Endowment for Acquisitions and Exhibitions, Patricia M. Patten Endowment, and the Estate of Glee and Robert Ries Endowment, with additional support from Friends of the VBMA Endowment.