“Beam” by Nan Lawson
“I’ve long admired Nan’s work and I own at least a couple of her prints. And so she would have been on my invite list regardless. But her recent work just amazes me. For many years, in my own painting, I was working out in real time things like style and narrative and in so many other ways trying to figure out how to make paintings the best way that I could. It wasn’t until pretty far along that I started to focus more on having a consistent emotional tone in my work. That my paintings could be recognizable by the way they make you feel, rather than what they contained or how they were painted. Nan’s recent work absolutely fits into this conversation I’m hoping to have about science fiction, the future, and the present. But damn do they make me feel things, and that is what I love most about them. It’s such a hard quality to achieve. They are sad and wistful and yet hopeful and optimistic. The future is not strictly dark nor light, it’s just very very real feeling. It makes me feel like I am standing there watching it unfold myself, and that is exactly what I hope to do in my own work, and what I hoped I could do with this show.” – Listfield
