"Sally Jablonsky’s untitled exhibition at V du V Wines explores the struggle between representational and non-objective painting. With generally thick brush strokes, Jablonsky creates wry and detailed portraits of friends and family. In Party Boi, Milo My Heart, Jablonsky’s smirking partner is seated before an outdoor fire, wearing a bandanna topped with a conical hat—a little taller than a standard party hat, but not quite the height of a dunce cap. The features of her subject’s printed t-shirt and floral over shirt are provided in expressionistic detail. Jablonsky insists that every detail is preserved, so the image is awash in textures, from the wicker of a nearby chair to the multifarious shapes of background flora—even a tiny cat face on the subject’s sock is rendered with care.

This mode of portrait painting is mingled with something very different, a hybrid painting style that is largely abstract, but has representational leanings. The most masterful example is “wet t-shirt contestant #1” a mass of black and pink with the suggestion of a golden braid falling to the side and breast-like shapes hanging near the bottom of the frame. The subject could be a stone as much as a body, a mere object doused with a green garden hose."

                                                                                                                   -Christopher Russell, for Dog and Pony, Spokane, WA, 2023

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