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“The Book of Hearts” – New Paintings by Paula Estey

To co-opt an Alice Neel statement:  ”I paint the human experience using my family as evidence. (my inference) I excavate and chronicle the human journey, using the past as guide, purveyor and prophet. When I go there, I find hope.”

 

Because many of the people in these snapshots are dead, there is a pay-off for my meticulous observations of, and alterations to their visages. Re-creating them, I co-create the details of my own past; write my own ‘book of life’ if you will. It is my desire to observe and to fabricate a new story from the observation. I paint to build relationships, to answer questions, to grow in awareness of some kind of faith.

 

I paint because I need a tribe to belong to. – Paula Estey, December 2011

Ed Friedman: "Plastic Visions"

Originally I had titled this show “Mannequins: I Walk with Dummies”. But after having worked on the images for a while in post processing, I began to feel that that title would be disrespectful to the mannequins. I began to think of them as individuals with their own personalities. This is particularly true in the images where the mannequins appear to be looking at each other. Sometimes the looks seem somewhat hostile, and we even see that they appear to be ganging up on another mannequin.

The original idea for the show came to me at the MFA in an exhibit of the couturier Scaasi. When I saw the mannequins in the dramatic museum lighting I was hooked. I honestly never looked at the fashion.

There are also some rather grotesque samples from an exhibit I saw in Cape Town, SA.They are somewhat disturbing, but have personalities of their own. And they seem to be gentle and inquisitive despite their hideous appearance.

Joseph Geary: "Internal Conflicts

In my most recent work, my departure from figuration has led me to imagining with palpable absurdity these abstract barriers. They began as a tool to obstruct and fragment the figure, then soon began to evolve in my studio. Sexuality and desire are themes I’m interested in working with because of how they exist at an intersection between culture and the natural, animal world. The use of the male body in mediated imagery as well as contemporary portraiture has fed my work revealing the socially constructed nature of the body. I’m exploring how external forces such as the media shape people’s perceptions of their bodies and create a disconnect between ideas of self and identity. I want to find ways to unsettle traditions of representation and hopefully challenge enigmatic ideas of beauty, value, and their opposites.