It is said that women have a higher tolerance for pain. Working in the style of the Old Masters, Gail Potocki imbues her Symbolist works with this distinctly feminine strength. With an unflinching eye, she stares directly into the depths of the world’s ugly truths and finds beauty in the dark. Exploring such themes as mortal sin and environmental decay, Potocki’s paintings are a window into desecration, both earthly and corporeal. Her subjects are led into temptation and made to pay for the mistakes of all mankind; absorbing the world’s transgressions, folding punishment into flesh. Yet Potocki’s haunted figures stare back with a steady gaze, enduring their penance with serenity and strength. In Gail Potocki’s landscape, there is no darkness without light, no sadness without hope.