Blake – Breakfast, San Francisco 1962 – 22” x 18” – Oil on linenOpening Reception: Saturday, October 1 from 4pm to 7:30pm
From the Artist: I’ve begun to paint my memoir. I invited the spirits of my former life and trusted that I would have a chance of touching on what Wallace Stevens called the essential poem at the center of things.
In my childhood, as in most, I made my way stumbling through the cultural landscapes I was thrown into. Saved by art school; I found a way into an artist’s life: living, painting, and raising kids in city apartments, cabins, and suburbs.
I got the scenes in these paintings from old snapshots. Something happens when I start to paint from them, something else happens. Andrew Solomon wrote: “The artist escorts his subjectivity into imagehood, a process akin to birth. Thus, every work of art is in some way a portrait not of its ostensible subject but of the artist, as likely to betray him as his children.”
What’s happened so far is: I’ve outed myself as a Jewish girl, I’ve memorialized my Uncle Lionel and Aunt Mary; I have no idea what they would think. I found my mother when she was calm or serene, before my brother was born. After painting my self at my fourth birthday party, and at Miss Marlos school of dance, and spending Sunday with my cousin and brother, waiting for the TV to be turned on, I could have called this exhibition, My Struggle, but that title has already been taken.
I have yet to paint my father.
Hours:
- Friday, Saturday, Sunday: 1pm to 7pm
Foundry Gallery is located at 2118 – 8th Street NW.
