User:Jmkruger

Judith Kruger (born 1955, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) is an American abstract, contemporary Nihonga painter. Ms. Kruger received her BFA in illustration in 1977 from the College of Visual and Performing Arts of Syracuse University and her MFA in painting in 2012 from the School of Fine Arts of Savannah College of Art and Design. She lives and works at the foothills of the Berkshires in Northwest Connecticut, 2 hours north of New York City.

From the age of 7 through graduation from Taylor Allderdice High School, she attended Carnegie Institute’s renowned Tam O’Shanter: traditional drawing and painting classes taught by the Pittsburgh legend, Joseph Fitzpatrick. Other notable artists who attended this selective program were Andy Warhol, Mel Bochner, Phillip Pearlstein, Raymond Saunders, and Chuck Connolly.

Prior to her painting career, Kruger was a successful product developer and designer with a diverse roster of clients, including Crate and Barrel for ceramic tableware, Metropolitan Opera Guild for textiles and Carlisle Companies for food service, hospital service and housewares. Shortly after “9/11”, she began studying Nihonga with the notable Ground Zero artist Makoto Fujimura and for the next 6 years, travelled extensively throughout Asia, researching mineral pigment manufacturing. As a result, the ecological matter inherent in ceramic manufacturing and the visceral surfaces inherent in Nihonga have cross-pollinated to influence her contemporary painting oeuvre.

Kruger’s paintings have been exhibited throughout the USA and abroad, including Sato Museum-Tokyo, Mass MoCA, Morrison Gallery-Kent, CT, Perimeter Gallery-Chicago, Bentley Gallery-Phoenix, Woman Made Gallery-Chicago, Gallery G-Hiroshima, Pallazo Dell'Annunziata-Matera, Italy and the Chicago Cultural Center-Chicago. Her Nihonga paintings employing pulverized semi-precious and earth pigments like azurite, malachite and calcite in addition to oxidized pure silver and gold leaf, are held in numerous private and public collections including Jefferson Hospital-Philadelphia, Savannah College of Art and Design-Savannah and Hong Kong and HCI Equity Partners-Washington, DC.

In 2008, Kruger developed and taught the course Nihonga: Then and Now at School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and was awarded a grant from Chicago Department of Cultural Affairs to teach her course Getting the Dirt on Paint in the Chicago public school system. She has an international following for her workshops and studio residency. Kruger is the US Editor of the Nihonga 100 blog and manages NANA (North American Nihonga Association) social media page. Kruger’s works include the Inland-Outland and Seijaku series. In April 2014, Kruger was commissioned to create Seijaku 30, a Nihonga painting for Phipps Conservatory Center for Sustainable Landscapes Beta Project, also featuring the work of Dale Chihuly.