News & Articles

AJ Atwater's gallery. Photo by Ed Newman

On Saturday, April 12, from 11 am to 4 pm, local abstract artist AJ Atwater opens her Lakeside studio – the historic Frank and Alison Crassweller home at 4701 Cooke Street – for a one-day Fine Art Estate Sale. 

She’s making available 130 of her best acrylics, priced from $75 to $750, in six sunlit galleries. Think 10”x 10” gems for your cabin or 4’x5’ stunners for your living room – some born on Lake Superior’s edge, others in New York City’s gritty heart. Atwater will be there, signing canvases while pointing first-timers and collectors toward art that pops.

 I first saw her work some years ago at Washington Galleries downtown – abstract pieces with a quiet energy that felt familiar yet fresh. She then followed up with several more shows in Duluth: Project 30/30 in 2013, with 30 paintings done in 30 days at Perry Framing; the New York Paintings in 2014; and a substantial online exhibit of 400 works in 2016. 

Her latest sale features 130 carefully selected pieces, drawn from Northland and North Shore galleries. Twenty of them come from her time in NYC’s Chinatown and the Art Students League, shaped by the guidance of landscapist Ronnie Landfield. The rest reflect the essence of the Superior region.
 “Lake Superior is my Manhattan,” she’s said – a line that stuck from when I chatted with her in 2016, fresh off a Manhattan stint. Duluth’s quiet vistas fuel her; New York’s buzz ignites her. 

Her canvases push and pull – whether a 10-inch square or a 7’x28’ monster she tackled back then. 
“Every painting’s a conversation between colors,” she told me, and you’ll see it April 12: blues and greens arguing, reds and yellows dancing. Big or small, it’s the same game – composition, shapes, raw energy.

Atwater is steeped in the New York School – de Kooning, Motherwell, Newman – those abstract giants still ruling major galleries. 

“Played out? I disagree,” she snapped when I prodded years ago. “They’re the foundation.” 
Her work’s got that Neo-Expressionist kick – messy, bold, alive – perfect for 2025’s chaotic art vibe. It’s what I personally like about this abstract expressionist movement. 

Superior’s moody shorelines sneak in too, a nod to Eco-Art’s rise, though she’s not preaching with recycled junk, just painting what she feels. There’s even a gallery titled Craft Beer, a nod to our regional craft beer movement, a Duluth quirk at its finest.

This sale offers many a steal. $75 gets you in, $750 snags a centerpiece. All pieces for sale are stretched canvas paintings. By and By Estate Sales will be handling sales for the show, cash or credit card.
Duluth shapes her, and she shapes it back. April 12 you can see 130 pieces for one day, featuring her best from two worlds. Bring wonder. It’s colossal, Northland-style. Here are some excerpts from our recent interview.

EN: Would you say that your work channels the energy of 1950s New York abstraction school? What drew you to that era and style over more contemporary trends? The New York School was all about raw emotion and bold gestures. How do you capture that spirit in your own paintings, and where do you feel you diverge from those pioneers?  

AJA: Behind every brushstroke I make, behind every artistic step I take the New York School informs, in every way possible, my painting aesthetic. Grace Hartigan and de Kooning are chief among my influences. They were fearless in their pursuit of a certain grace in painting that couldn’t be defined and was therefore wild and fierce. Across the decades this fierceness converged into my own abstract painting style that from brush to canvas to completion is an unplanned mystery grounded in exacting compositions. 

EN: With your major show is coming up in April, are there any pieces in the exhibition that you’re most excited for people to see, and what stories do they tell?  

AJA: My fine art estate sale on April 12 shows pieces inspired by New York City and Lake Superior. Here are some impressions of painting in the two locations:  
I painted at the Art Students League of New York under lyrical landscape painter Ronnie Landfield 2012-2018. 

The New York City Gallery in my April 12 show presents stretched canvas paintings created in Landfield’s paint-splattered gymnasium-sized studio where he told personal stories peppered with names like Lee Krasner and Andy Warhol. He would percolate through the studio, quietly striding while teaching through stories rather than critique. Through gesture rather than artistic words. The painting “Grit” is a piece in the show that captures NYC energy and the energy too of the New York School.  

Lake Superior defines Duluth and the North Shore Drive where shorelines and horizon lines – marked by fog, explosive waves or placid mirror-like reflections – are ever-changing and this ever-changing shifting inspires and informs my atmospheric Lake Superior paintings. In the show see my Palisade Head Series residing next to shoreline abstracts that show off Lake Superior at its absolute, restless best.              

One hot New York summer I painted for a month at Studio Haus, a shared studio for artists, writers, photographers and designers on Broome Street between Forsyth and Eldridge in Manhattan’s Chinatown. I was the first to arrive in the near-morning dark and inside the studio through the barred security gate, I listened to the neighborhood wake up: The shouts of truck drivers, the sounds of forklifts hurrying cartons of merchandise into shops, some selling the strongest coffee I have ever tasted. These sights and sounds of Chinatown made their way into my mind and into my arm and out on canvas. The 10 pieces in the show in the Chinatown Gallery are my entire production from that month and a treasure to see.   

 EN: The 1950s New York scene was chaotic, gritty and male-dominated. As a modern artist, how do you see your perspective reshaping that legacy?  

AJA: Ninth Street Women is a tome of a book. It takes on the life of women painters who reshaped the New York School in the ’50s, painters like Helen Frankenthaler and Joan Mitchell. They carved a path forward for women in the painting arts and that path runs smart and straight to this very day to women painters, including myself.   

EN: Abstraction can be deeply personal. Is there a specific experience or feeling from your life that keeps showing up in your brushstrokes or color choices? Artists like Kline and Motherwell used black and white to stark effect. How do you approach color – or its absence – in your work to evoke a response? Do you have any rituals – music, a messy studio, late nights – that get you into the zone? 

AJA: I dip or jab my brush into jars of Heavy Body Golden acrylic paint and the color-mixing that arises when I apply paint to canvas is a culmination of that dipping or jabbing.  I don’t use a palette.  It’s straight from the jar onto the canvas. It’s like cutting out the middle man. Going straight to the heart of my unplanned mystery.  

Time of day is irrelevant and color is the superstar of the show. It’s the director, directing the power of bold Cadmium Red Light or the power of subtle Titanium Buff into an orderly or disorderly yet exacting fashion from the tip of my brush to the canvas working surface.           

EN: The 1950s were about breaking rules and finding freedom in art. Where do you hope your work takes that idea next after this exhibition?

AJA: After this colossal estate sale of 130 paintings of the cream of the cream of my painting collection I expect to step to my easel, brush poised in hand, jab into paint jars and meet the next unplanned mystery. 

EN: You mention that this once was the home of Frank & Alison Crassweller. In what ways does having your studio and gallery in a historic home influence you?

AJA: Having my studio and galleries in one of Duluth’s historic homes, the Frank and Alison Crassweller home, is nothing short of inspiring.  Sinclair Lewis was a regular guest who would stop by to play chess at one of the first homes to be built in Lakeside.  What a great vibe. High ceilings and hardwood flooring make my home ideal for creating and for exhibiting artwork.  

In the same spirit this home was built with, I am presenting my work to first time art buyers and art collectors at the April 12 AJ Atwater Fine Art Estate Sale.