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From Brooklyn, New York, Lorraine Peltz received her MFA from the University of Chicago and her BFA from the State University of New York at New Paltz. She has had numerous one person shows and been included in many group exhibitions including at the Hyde Park Art Center in Chicago, Galerie Piltzer in Paris, Arden Gallery in Boston, Olga Dollar Gallery in San Francisco, Carrie Secrist Gallery in Chicago, Printworks Gallery in Chicago, the Rockford Art Museum, the Renaissance Society in Chicago, the Herbert Johnson Museum at Cornell University, and many others.  Peltz lives and works in Chicago and teaches at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. 

Peltz’s new body of work continues and expands her dialogue with issues concerning the social narrative we construct in both the private and public realms.  Her paintings and drawings provide profound visual pleasure with bold color and striking imagery, as well as engaging us intellectually with her content of sign and symbol. Lorraine Peltz’s recent paintings examine a dreamy side of feminine fantasy and fashion culture.  By combining various painting languages including recognizable imagery and painterly abstraction, Peltz attempts to mimic and reconcile how meaning is made, bit by bit, real life alongside memory, poetry next to prose.

As Lisa Wainwright, Dean of Graduate Studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and Professor of Art History wrote in 2006, here are “worlds aqueous and cosmic, airy and verdant. The paintings glow with uncanny resonance and optical sheen. And then Peltz interrupts the dreaminess to cast a range of signs into ethereal spaces.  Myriad symbols in their speech bubble niches hint at a narrative that unfolds from picture to picture. Both of nature and from culture, her icons speak to the polemic between essentialism and social construction that still grips feminist discourse…the mix of aesthetic delight and conceptual reading makes…one of Peltz’s strongest shows to date.”

Mentholated Daydream, 2007 oil on canvas, 36” x 36”	Turbulent Waters, 2006 oil on canvas, 36” x 36”	Afternoon Delight, 2006 oil on canvas, 36” x 36”
Dance Card, 2006 oil on canvas, 36” x 36”	Lotus, 2007 oil on canvas, 36” x 36”	Stardust1, 2007 oil on canvas, 24” x 24”
Orange Crush, 2007 oil on canvas, 40” x 30”	Shift, 2007 oil on canvas, 40” x 30”	Perfect Pair, 2007 oil on canvas, 48” x 50”