Informed by her religious upbringing and her love of Renaissance painting, Naudline Pierre re-interprets devotional painting traditions with maverick imaginativeness, devising phantasmagoric scenes where humanoid figures radiate colorful nimbi and commune with winged beings emitting bristly haloes or pointy metaphysical rays. These strange paintings recall antecedents such as William Blake and El Greco, who also painted religious iconography with striking visual unconventionality. Yet Pierre’s mission is more personal. Her father is a pastor; witnessing exorcisms and contemplating fantastic biblical parables kindled her childhood imagination. As an artist, she became keenly aware that classical Eurocentric Christian iconography lacked representations resembling her, a black woman, and now paints her own mythic realm. United by a broad theme of love, the altarpiece-like paintings in her current show bear apocalyptic undercurrents of danger and redemption. The protagonist in these paintings is an alter ego whom Pierre refers to as her “shadow self”; this character, recognizable as the most developed and opaquely painted, abides spiritual conflicts and communions among entities appearing ambiguously angelic, demonic or human. In Eternal Depth of Love Divine (2019, pictured above), a dove beams gray shadows upon Pierre’s face while dark flames lick at her scarlet legs and the golden wings of a melted angel lying beside her. Circumventing clear-cut dichotomies between good and evil, Pierre’s mysterious world offers an open-ended alternative to spiritual dogma.

Shulamit Nazarian
616 N. La Brea Ave.
Los Angeles, CA 90036
Show runs through Oct. 26