What happens when you are trapped inside your home with those you love? As the pandemic begins to wane, some artists are reflecting and exploring the dynamics and conditions of the confinement we experienced last year. Elizabeth McIntosh’s solo show “Family” at Tanya Leighton’s new space in Los Angeles explores domesticity within the artist’s family. With eight large-scale paintings, McIntosh’s “Family” is a tableau of reactions to the lockdown. Framing the work is a statement written by Chlose McIntosh Murray, the artist’s 17-year-old daughter.
Chainlink, 2021
The paintings straddle between abstraction and figurative with a collage-like presentation suggesting figures and forms. Each work is revelatory in their composition as they convey a part of an overall narrative of both isolation and endurance. McIntosh’s paintings are complex, layering figures on abstract backgrounds that in turn seem to be something else. In Chainlink (all works dated 2021) a simple chain link pattern dominates the canvas; in New York Walk, we see a painterly brilliant slice of pizza next to a white outline of a young girl on a flat black background; a blue tracing line of a horse is painted over a background of a city grid in Glitz. All these symbolic line images make appearances in many of the works. McIntosh juxtaposes what is safe inside and an outside world that is both closed and fearful.
Glitz, 2021
The home is both a stage for tension between inner and outer. There is a longing that permeates these paintings. In Murray’s statement observing her family during lockdown, she writes, “there is conflict and chaos that only we see, a pattern of stress that continues and intersects as we all contribute.” By using her daughter as a conduit, McIntosh creates an environment in the work that coalesce frustration within the family and in the end finds love.
Elizabeth McIntosh: Family
June 8 – July 10, 2021
0 Comments