It’s difficult for paintings of female nudes in bucolic landscapes to transcend historic tropes of voyeuristic escapism, but Deborah Brown succeeds in positing hers as self-reflective meditations on contemporary femininity. The 11 paintings in her show at The Lodge set forth a dream world inhabited only by a woman, canines and a canoe. Together these scenes expound a loosely sequential imaginary narrative of exploration and motion whereby the lone protagonist, who stands in for the artist, sets off in her canoe, paddles across a lake, traverses a beach and finally arrives at a magical garden in Danae and Zeus (2018, pictured above). Brown’s rapid wet-on-wet brushwork conveys a soft, blurry dreaminess; her idyllic settings evoke Maxfield Parrish and early California plein-air; and her subjects reference bather paintings and Greek mythology. Yet there are undertones of precariousness. Dramatic interplay between light and shadow intimates a sense of foreboding expounded by the presence of the dogs, which seem to act as guards as well as companions in works such as Tiptoe (2019). With no one to leeringly appraise her, the woman’s nudity bespeaks freedom; but there is also vulnerability in her aloneness. In the final painting, Narcissus (2019), she gazes into a murky pool, perhaps reflecting on the distance she has traveled, the effort of her journey, and what might lie ahead. Here we most clearly apprehend her face; but her body slightly overbrims its outlines, as though she were still coming into being, or perhaps dissolving.

The Lodge
1024 N. Western Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90029
Show runs through Oct. 26