In her magnificently detailed and inventive paintings, Gina Litherland's work recalls fifteenth-century Sienese painting, although her incongruous scenes also reflect the tradition of Midwest surrealism and magic realism. Born in Gary, Indiana, Litherland has been active in the visual arts since the mid 1970s, exploring photography, performance, and painting. She studied painting at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and her paintings, drawings, and articles have been published worldwide in journals and periodicals associated with the international surrealist movement. Her essay on the connections between creative activity and the natural world, “Imagination & Wilderness,” appeared in Surrealist Women: An International Anthology, published by University of Texas Press. Litherland’s work has been the subject of museum exhibitions at the Haggerty Museum of Art in Milwaukee, the Caestecker Gallery at Ripon College in 2014, the Crossman Gallery in UW Whitewater in 2015, Lawton Gallery at UW Green Bay in 2015, and several solo exhibitions at Corbett vs. Dempsey Gallery in Chicago, most recently in 2016. Her work will also be featured in the upcoming exhibition, "The Siren: Your Deceiving Coat of Arms" at the Museum of Modern Art, Warsaw this spring. She lives in Cedarburg, Wisconsin.
