Giovanni’s Room is pleased to present an exhibition of new paintings created en plein air by artist Gretchen Nuechter. This is the artist’s second exhibition at the gallery in Los Angeles.

There is a long history of pushback on traditional art school norms of critique. We have all heard the stories: a young, not-yet-wearied artist feels suddenly inspired by an idea, and they present a blank canvas to their art class. “This piece is about nothing.” Iterations of such happen thereafter. They cut a hole in the canvas. They dismember it.Paint it one color only, and then flip it around and paint it another. And of course, my favorite—they bring nothing at all. “Nothing is about nothing,” someone will always say.

The basis of skill within artistry will then be called into question. Anybody can cut a hole in a blank canvas; the art critique (also known as an art killer) ventures to declare that then anybody is an artist. The iPhone killed the photographer, and the annoying and often “misunderstood” teenager in critique killed the painter. My favorite line: “I could do that,” and more often than not, you’d be right.

Of course, we don’t go around discrediting the bank teller, mailman, or finance person on the basis that “I too can do that.” For some reason, the artist has become fair game. The only other profession I know that takes as much heat and speculation tends to be the mother. Both jobs are quickly dismissed as “not real” and, for the most part, unpaid. People have been painters and mothers much longer than quite literally anything else. So why is it that, as a society, we are so bored with both?

In school, I was required to take a critique class every semester. I was shocked by how many artists presented their work with so many words behind it. A girl painted a rather large abstract piece. It was gestural and colorful, and I remember liking it very much. When critique was over, you were allowed to talk about your work in your own words. The painting was meant to be about her trauma growing up with an emotionally abusive mother. I thought, that’s not what the painting is about, that’s what you are about.

When I paint, is it informed by the fact that my father is a hoarder with bipolar disorder and manic depression? Absolutely. But the painting I did on my hands and knees while my baby slept in the next room is not about that. Maybe I paint as a way to escape what that experience is like. Or maybe I just did really badly in high school and went on to the only college that accepted me not based on grades (art school).

So is it too simple to say that my paintings are about painting? That every day I wake up and I am a mother and also a painter?

My studio is my backyard, where I drape an unstretched canvas over an iron gate and work standing up. My whole body moves up and down and then side to side. It feels like being fed. Sometimes, if the piece is too big, I roll it out in the driveway and paint on my hands and knees. It’s hard on my back and shoulders, but it’s also wonderful. It feels like being fifteen again, when I would lay magazines out on the bathroom floor and make collages at night.

When my baby stirs on the monitor, I strip down to my underwear (because my clothes are covered in oil paint) in the doorway and run into his room to rock him back to sleep. Sometimes I have to do this two or three times, peeling my paint-covered clothes on again and off again—and still, it’s worth it.

That is what I Don’t Need You Anymore is about, though I swore to someone, at some point, that I would never make anything about being a mother. The spotlight shines more on the growth, the shed, the path that motherhood leads you down—the things you are able to release yourself from thereafter.

I now work quickly and dirty. I often come back inside with paint over my face and under my fingernails. People ask me what my paintings’ “theme” is, and I usually just make something up because I don’t want to explain much else. I use words like process and fragments. It satisfies.

Then there are some who ask what I do all day, just taking care of the baby? And I have to respond, remind them of what my job is. But they won’t really get it, and that’s okay. Why? Because I don’t need you to credit what I am doing, to like it, to understand it, to acknowledge the job. I don’t need to be part of the critique. What does it mean? What does it do?

Truly, I do not need you anymore. — Gretchen Nuechter, 2026