Lily Stockman's Abstract Paintings Reflect Life During Quarantine
A year that has become “everything, all at once.”
New York City’s Charles Moffett gallery is launching its first exhibition since the start of the coronavirus pandemic this September. In the former Benjamin Moore paint factory from the 1920s, 22 oil paintings from Los Angeles-based textile designer and visual artist Lily Stockman will go on display. While the new paintings for “Seed, Stone, Mirror, Match” respond to the seemingly mundane inspiration Stockman found during quarantine, they also capture an unprecedented year, which the artist refers to as “everything, all at once.”
Drawing from the compositions of Fra Angelico’s fifteenth century frescoes, ninth century tradition of Indian miniature painting and the language of twentieth century American abstract painters, Stockman creates paintings that reference nature and give hints to plants, birds and places. The colorful voluptuous forms, which seem to float in space, were influenced by her time spent in Mongolia as an apprentice in Buddhist thangka painting and a year spent in Jaipur studying Indian miniature painting.
The exhibition showcases how Stockman reacted to her physical world “suddenly being very small” — something most viewers can relate to this year. Although she sought inspiration from the little things, like the doctor’s cell phone number jotted down on an electric bill or a packet of flower seeds mailed from her mother, the symmetrical works — bright in color and rendered precisely — evoke something greater than the objects they aim to depict.
Check out a few installation views from “Seed, Stone, Mirror, Match” in the slideshow above. The exhibition will run from September 4 to October 18.
Elsewhere in art, Stephen Ormandy will display new works in an upcoming solo exhibition called “Intransitive” at London’s Rhodes Contemporary.
Charles Moffett
511 Canal St
New York, NY 10013
