Track 1 (limited edition blend) artwork by Cindy Bernhard
The Dark Night of the Soul, oil on canvas, 72 x 120 in, 2024
Trinity, oil on canvas, 60 x 90 in, 2024
“A Spiritual Cindy Bernhard in “The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars”
Maybe I'm stretching or maybe I'm right on point, but this is the perfect timing for a Cindy Bernhard show. Feeling as we are on the precipice of what is both a seimisic shift and yet the gut feeling that for 8 years now we have been on an anxiety-riddled precipice, Bernhard has gathered this sort of feeling and created sublime, personal paintings. The title of her show, The Darker the Night, the Brighter the Stars, a reference from Fyodor Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment, captures Bernhard's juxtaposition of mysticism and spirituality.
In the context of Crime and Punishment, this line captures a theme where suffering and hardship can lead to greater clarity, redemption, or understanding. The novel's exploration of morality, guilt, and the possibility of redemption amidst dire circumstances, we ain't really traveling far from the world we find ourselves in now. At the center of Bernhard's exhibition is The Dark Night of the Soul, "a six by ten-foot painting set in an imagined version of the artist’s studio, titled after the 16th century poem of the same name by St. John of the Cross," who himself was a a Spanish mystic, poet, and Roman Catholic saint, who emphasized the importance of surrender and detachment from worldly desires in order to achieve spiritual enlightenmen, thus having a profound influence on Christian mysticism and spirituality.
There are a lot of elements at play in Cindy's work but mainly we are looking at growth, something greater amongst the surface level. She balances her larget works to date with some of her smallest. It's a journey, and we are here for it. —Evan Pricco
Click here to read the full article.
“Cindy Bernhard Takes Us to Church”
‘When Cindy Bernhard found the cats she found herself. That is the short summary of the story. During the pandemic, and years of trying to find her artistic voice, Chicago-based Bernhard painted a cat in her work and found that voice, that direction, that narrative, the character that was her but also something so universal. The cats aren't just lying about, they are sleekily wandering beautiful rooms, hiding behind beautiful objects, with candles and purple and the night as the backdrop. They are inquisitive and curious, much like Bernhard herself.
On the eve of her solo show Take Me to Church at Richard Heller Gallery, Radio Juxtapoz sat down with Bernhard to discuss religion, growing up on a farm, a brief move to Los Angeles, finding a home in Chicago and how the cats and the candles made it into her work.’
Click to listen to Radio Juxtapoz, Episode 139, Cindy Bernhard
New American Paintings, Issue 167 , cover artist
‘One of the Chicago-based artists featured in this issue is painter Cindy Bernhard. I first encountered her work in a small group show several years ago, although she first began exhibiting in 2010. In the past two years, interest in Bernhard’s practice has taken a dramatic upswing; as I write these words, her work is the focus of a successful solo exhibition at Monya Rowe Gallery in New York City.
There is a lot of window dressing in the art world, but, ultimately, the work is the most important element. Artists must have not only ideas worthy of exploring but also the technical and conceptual abilities to generate meaningful content from those ideas; simply put, the work needs to be “there”.
For artists such as Bernhard and many others, the timing is precisely right; and what they have to say is presently relevant. I don’t think you can force this in any art form…sometimes the world is ready for your vision and sometimes it is not. I am a big believer that if an artist’s practice is significant, the world will catch up.’
Steven Zevitas, Publisher and Editor
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Stairway, oil on canvas, 60 x 48 in, 2023
