IN CROWD: Rebecca Dayan Watercolor Exhibit

Emblazed in hot pink Pallas, Rebecca Dayan welcomed new eyes unto her watercolor solo exhibit at the Catherine Ahnell Gallery in Soho. The space features stark white walls marked by bleeding watercolor apples and parted lips. Each subject, a friend, is set in the center of newsprint and framed by the paper's natural response to water. “Newsprint allows me to work almost the same way you work with oil on paper, except oil is a bit more forgiving because you can go back and paint right over what you’ve done. With watercolor I’ll wait until it dries and then I’ll go back to add layers. Because it’s newsprint and not watercolor paper, it blends nicely and the paper crinkles, which I love,” Dayan said.

The Catherine Ahnell Gallery was made a live-in space for Rebecca for one month prior to the now open exhibit. During this time, the space became a temporary home as it harmonized the artist’s basic need for shelter with the artist’s outer expression of inspiration. “I pulled from a lot of religious iconography ” Dayan said. Raw meets soft in each watercolor stained image, though not one painting can stand alone as her most proud piece. “I love all of them, it goes in and out,” she told us.