Billis/Williams Gallery is pleased to present Stephanie Serpick: New Paintings, the gallery’s first solo exhibition of paintings by the upstate New York-based artist. Serpick’s intimately-scaled oil paintings capture darkly beautiful moments that balance the complexities of being human. The exhibition opens with a reception on March 28th and continues through May 2nd.
Stephanie Serpicks’ paintings explore themes of contemplation, isolation, and renewal. The unifying challenges to physical and mental health are a shared experience from which to consider grief, the processing of all types of loss, and eventual healing. The paintings pull the viewer close and share a moment – the glimpse of light through a blowing curtain, rumpled sheets on a bed, shadows of the unknown through transparent gauze, hints of soft darkness.
The sense of motion and wonder brings the paintings to life – are we waking from a dream? Emerging from a difficult time? Seeing the sunrise on a new day? There is comfort and hope rising from the shadows.
Source material for these paintings are photographs Serpick finds and takes herself. The imagery is seen from different perspectives and with varying emotion built through warm or cool color palettes. The deeply moving paintings are impeccably painted.
Serpick paints, sands, and repaints the surfaces – building up a history and accumulations of time. The heavily worked grounds give depth and humanity to the paintings. They reference the sense of having been through it all – as we as humans can feel at moments – our emotions rubbed raw by life. These paintings are devoid of humans but full of their presence. They are alone but not lonely – tranquil in their quiet.
Stephanie Serpick (b. Baltimore, Maryland) received her BFA from Carnegie Mellon University and her MFA from the University of Chicago. Stephanie’s work has been shown in numerous exhibitions around the world, including galleries in New York, California, Germany, and the UK among others. Her work has been published in Art and Aesthetics, Greenwich Free Press, Greenwich Time, My Modern Met, Hyperallergic, Art Spiel Blog, Ruminate Magazine, New American Paintings, Chicago Sun-Times, F Newsmagazine, and Hyde Park Herald. She currently works and lives in Upstate New York. She currently lives and works in Upstate New York.
