Artwork by Dina Brodsky, 2025, oil on copper // Artwork by Lorraine Loots, 2025, watercolor

Dina Brodsky & Lorraine Loots: Little Italy
August 1 – August 24, 2025

OPENING RECEPTION
Friday, August 1 • 6PM – 8PM
RSVP here*
*Appreciated but not required

WORKSHOPS WITH LORRAINE LOOTS

Paintings for Ants: An Introduction to Miniature Watercolor Painting
Thursday, July 31 • 6PM-9PM
Get tickets here

Paintings for Ants: A Master Class in Miniature Watercolor Painting
Saturday, August 2 • 10AM-3PM
Get tickets here

Paradigm Gallery + Studio is pleased to present Little Italy, a celebration of travel featuring artwork by Boston, USA-based artist Dina Brodsky and South Africa-based artist Lorraine Loots.  From opposite corners of the globe, both of these artists have cultivated their careers documenting their worlds in small scale but to widespread acclaim. During the pandemic, Brodsky and Loots connected and bonded over their passion for contemporary miniature, Loots painting in watercolor and Brodsky with oil, and vowed to collaborate once they were able to. After holding onto hope and travel bans lifted, they realized they had the same dream destination: Italy, a land that satisfied multiple definitions of sanctuary to each artist. These two different stories demonstrate the unique effect that Italy has on creatives as a place that holds the keys to centuries of art and architecture history,  with a passion for color and cuisine. There, they spent time soaking up the sights, sounds, and foods while chronicling their experiences in photography for Loots and in sketchbook form for Brodsky. Upon returning back home, their unique methods of documenting blossomed into a fantastical collection that forces viewers to get up close and intimate with their captured memories.

Journeying through Rome and Florence, the artists discovered how two people can love and experience the same places in vastly different ways. Brodsky would place herself in a single spot, gazing out at the Trevi Fountain or the lush countryside, and spend hours working in her prized sketchbook. She would take in all the details of her surroundings and translate them into thin layers of oil atop vibrant hues she uses for her underpainting. Using traditional painting techniques from the 16th to 19th centuries, her artwork becomes tiny portholes looking out to historic ruins and city rooftops alike, blending antiquity and modernity in a new realm.  Brodsky’s brilliant palette is informed by her first time experiencing Italy as a child. Born in Belarus, Brodsky’s family was one of many that left the country on refugee status in the late 1980s when it was still part of the Soviet Union. Her memories of the gray, block towers of Belarus were in deep contrast with the bucolic hills and beaches of the Italian countryside.  Even though this rural part of Italy was only a temporary sanctuary for Brodsky's family, it created a lifelong connection for the artist through her childhood memories of the place that launched her into her new life outside of Belarus. During her trip, Brodsky still saw the mystic quality of Italy, alive in the people and landscape that inspired her collection.

Instead of soaking in a single location for many hours, Loots took a different approach and had a feverish desire to discover as much of the city as possible. Harboring a lifelong admiration for Italy, Loots was ecstatic to explore the historic sites of the Pantheon and the Coliseum, as well as common corridors and gardens. Equipped with a pair of heirloom cameras (her father’s old Pentax K1000 and her grandfather's Yashica D), Loots was able to create an archive of everything she ate, the plazas she walked through, and the waterways she relaxed by. All of this became research, as Loots’ artistic practice has been rooted in using her personal photographs characterized by the graininess of the vintage film.  Once she develops the photographs back home, she can choose her favorite compositions and begin to portray them in hyperreal miniature form. She uses a fine paintbrush to layer her watercolor works spanning less than an inch in diameter.  As visitors peer into the pieces, they begin to notice the magic hue that enlivens the pieces, which can be attributed to the film photographs but also to the romance and novelty Loots consumed in her dream city. 

As their pilgrimage ignited their creativity, the artists decided to share a glimpse into their practices to complement the exhibition. A display of Brodsky’s sketchbooks and a selection of Loots’ film photographs of the trip will be used to demonstrate the different ways to experience and document a place. The exhibition is an expansive love letter, tapping into why people are so passionate about Italy that they continue to spread the culture, present in New York’s Little Italy, Philadelphia’s Italian Market, and more across the globe. It speaks to why two artists chose it among anywhere in the world to meet in person, create artwork, and return to. While the collections may be small in scale, up close they are extraordinary worlds, ready to be explored and to find haven in. 

Dina Brodsky & Lorraine Loots: Little Italy will be on view on the first floor of the Paradigm Arts Building (12 N 3rd Street) from August 1 through August 24, 2025, with a public opening reception on Friday, August 1st from 6:00-8:00 pm.

*Please email info@paradigm-gallery.com if you wish to receive the digital collector preview for the upcoming exhibition, or submit your request HERE.*

About Dina Brodsky
Dina Brodsky is a contemporary realist miniaturist, painter and curator.  She was educated at University of Massachusetts Amherst, and the New York Academy of Art, where she received her MFA. She lives and works in Boston. She has taught privately, and in several institutions including the Castle Hill Center for the Arts, the Long Island Academy of Fine Art and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  Dina is also a social media expert and has over 1,000,000 followers on Instagram, as of February 2025.

About Lorraine Loots
Lorraine Loots is a South African artist best known for her miniature painting series, 365 Paintings for Ants, launched in 2013. Born in Bloemfontein, South Africa, she completed her BA degree in Visual Communications at Stellenbosch University in 2008, her MA in Film and Media at the University of Cape Town in 2011, and in 2012 attained a diploma in Business Acumen for Artists at the UCT School of Business. She is inspired by the notion of synergizing nostalgia, sentiment and assigned meaning to create heirloom artworks. She currently lives in Cape Town with her family: husband, Mark, and sons, Felix and Rafael.

About Paradigm Gallery + Studio
Paradigm Gallery + Studio® was established in 2010 by co-founders and curators, Jason Chen and Sara McCorriston. The gallery exhibits meaningful, process-intense contemporary artwork by emerging and mid-career artists from around the world. In 2022, Paradigm announced the opening of its new 5-story, 7,000 sq. ft. home, The Paradigm Arts Building, in Old City, Philadelphia. Now open to the public, the building boasts multiple floors of exhibition space, integrated in-house design and printmaking, a dedicated events floor, and art advisory offices. With this, Chen and McCorriston expanded their vision for the greater Philadelphia arts community. The gallery is at the heart of this vision, anchoring Paradigm’s overall mission of increasing access to the commercial art world, supporting artists and advancing their careers, and collaborating with like-minded partners to build a more equitable, sustainable arts economy for all.

EXHIBITION HOURS
Thursdays • 10 AM – 6 PM
Fridays • 10 AM – 6 PM
Saturdays • 11 AM – 6 PM
Sundays • 11 AM – 5 PM
And by appointment outside of hours.

MEDIA CONTACT
For all inquiries contact info@paradigm-gallery.com

LOCATION
12 N. 3rd Street
Philadelphia, PA 19106

SOCIAL MEDIA
Instagram: @ParadigmGS
TikTok: ParadigmGallery
Facebook: facebook.com/paradigmgallery

*Please email info@paradigm-gallery.com if you wish to receive the digital collector preview for the upcoming exhibition, or submit your request HERE.*