Delia Brown "Precious"
D'Amelio Gallery
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The intimately detailed works are reminiscent of the 19th century scenes depicted by Mary Cassatt and Berthe Morisot. According to Brown, “The title, Precious, also refers to how attitudes about paintings are gendered. In painting school during the late 80s, one was told not to be ‘precious’, which was a way of saying that one must instead be bold, muscular, unattached, unsentimental – in a word, masculine.”
Precious shows the artist entering portraits of maternity, propping children on her hip or cozying up in rumpled sheets for story-time. Brown has created images by which she investigates maternity without the compromises of real motherhood, but perhaps too, without the rewards.
Brown has also offered cherubic stills of children alone, gazing back at the viewer amidst their snacks and toys. Stepping out of the frame, the artist captures 11-year-old girls, primping in the bathroom or leisurely playing with their puppies against fine fabrics and furnishings. The luminescent layers of paint recall the delicate decadence of the Rococo painters while the subject, girls apart from their mothers, idle their time in a Balthusian tension where innocence teeters on the cusp of naughtiness.
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Schedule
from May 08, 2008 to June 27, 2008