Rising senior at Carnegie Mellon University, Ester Petukhova (b. 2000, Vologda, Russia) is selling her painting, Evidence of Survival: Slovyansk, Ukraine (A Portrait of My Uncle Who is Alive and Free), to raise funds for Save the Children, Ukraine – an organization that has been operating in Ukraine since 2014. The work is included in Artsy’s June Contemporary Art Auction

here is pleased to present, Bait and Tackle, a solo exhibition by Brooklyn-based and largely self-taught painter, Rebecca Rau. The opening reception will take place Friday, April 22nd, from 6 to 8pm.

Bait and Tackle features nine new paintings by Rau that reveal the artist’s immediate desire to capture her sitter’s energy by trapping them in either quasi-mythic narratives or deeply symbolic dream-worlds. Working from life and photographs, Rau’s mostly male models (muses) are the genesis for each painting. Rather than subscribing to the idea that portraiture is about capturing a moment of intimacy, Rau sees portraiture as a tool to regulate intimacy, to create a physical and metaphorical barrier between her and her sitter.