J. L. Abraham

Born and educated in Adelaide, Australia.  J. L. Abraham moved to New York City to study literature at Columbia University.  She is a professor at Sarah Lawrence College, where she teaches literature and queer studies and has published book reviews, essays, and two books entitled Are Girls Necessary (1996), and Metropolitan Lovers (2008).

Abraham studied printmaking and painting at The Art Students League of New York and is currently a member of the Society of American Graphic Artists and the Boston Printmakers.

While Abraham’s art began with intaglio printing and the geometry of architectural subjects, she shifted to relief printmaking, particularly linocut and woodcut.  Her practice is grounded in working by hand (printing and painting), working on paper (French sheets, Japanese rolls, machine made in America), and working through aggregation (blocks, images, materials, methods).

“Gertrude Stein meets Josef and Anni Albers in her mind’s eye.  Language and color have become, together and separately, her subjects.  She fuses writing with drawing, text with pattern.  The geometries that result are read rarely as letters (even when they are) – but more often as evocations of the flat space of architectural plans, the bulk of the built environment, the technological mazes in which we live, or celebrations of pure abstraction.”