Friday night was the premiere of the art exhibit Tough Love, created by longtime friends Cat Balco and Megan Craig. The artists have been friends since they were roommates in college at Yale University. Both have previously had solo exhibits, but admit it has been a new experience working together as artists and friends.

“This is a good moment in our careers… it feels like a conversation,” Craig said.

It took the artists six months to put their show together, and although they have completely different styles, their paintings flow nicely together throughout the exhibit. Balco enjoys painting airy colorful patterns, while Craig prefers dense, directional strokes.

Both artists were previously New York cityscape painters turned abstract painters. The artists acknowledge that it can be difficult to determine where one painting ends and the other begins due to the intertwining shapes and mixed colors. The paintings are a reflection of their friendship. Both artists were inspired by Joseph Albers, a German artist and educator who believed that abstraction is more real than nature.

“This exhibit is very sentimental for us,” Balco said.

Balco received her M.F.A in Painting from Yale in 2007 and has been the recipient of several awards including the Helen Winternitz Award in Painting and the Gloucester Landscape Painting Prize. Currently she is an Assistant Professor of Painting and Drawing at the Harford Art School/University of Hartford. Some of her exhibition venues include The Painting Center in New York City, Real Art Ways in Hartford, and Nuarlink Gallery in Westport, Conn. Balco has also been featured in publications such as ArtInfo.com, the New York Times and the London-based magazine Bon International.

Craig has received her Ph.D in Philosophy from the New School for Social Research in 2007. Her awards include painting residencies and fellowships from the Vermont Studio Center, the Weir Farm Trust, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the New York Foundation of Arts and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation. Craig is currently an Assistant Professor of Philosophy and Art at SUNY Stone Brook in New York. She has had exhibits in New York at Sundaram Tagore Gallery, Scott and Brown in Kent, Donna Tribby Fine Art in West Palm Beach, Fla., and the Kunstverein Grafschaft Bentheim in Germany.

The artists’ work is showing in the Seton Art Gallery on UNH’s campus now through Nov. 2, 2012. For more information, contact Seton Art Gallery director Laura Marsh at [email protected].