COATES & SCARRY

In The Eyes of Each

Faction Art Projects has announced a solo show of paintings by award-winning British artist Lisa Wright. In the Eyes of Each will be Wright’s most ambitious exhibition in New York to date and will present a new series of oil paintings which Wright refers to as her “inner landscape” series, figurative works that scrutinize much that appears to be fleeting, transient, ever-changing, earthy and lyrical. Yet this work also speaks to the timelessness of the human condition, and begs our consideration and sympathy for it.


Wright is recognised for her distinctive figurative paintings that explore the physical and emotional state of childhood and adolescence. Her work is informed by subtle references to historical painting, but the careful balance between abstract and figurative elements underscore the vital contemporary nature of the work.
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Abstract sensibilities are upheld by masterly draughtsmanship and painterly use of colour, liberal and seductive in its application and brushwork. Optical and textural characteristics add intrigue to Wright’s arresting and unsettling subjects. Flashes of intense bright colour, her signature intricate overlay of lace-like structures combined with impasto motifs from the natural world heighten the emotional response.

In her essay for this exhibition, art critic and writer Sacha Craddock  writes, “Research merges with understanding, and expectation clashes with surprise, in a process that allows shifts of emphasis and empathy. It is clear that these transparent beings might eventually grow up, yet they are also spirits who carry nature on their side, on their skin, painted across the boughs of their body. Each figure caught in a transition between self-knowledge, understanding and innocence, is a time capsule, within which a range of psychological metaphor and plain Freudian reasoning can be planted, or buried.”

Since completing her post graduate studies at the Royal Academy Schools London in 1992, Wright’s paintings have been exhibited nationally and internationally with solo presentations in London, New York, Hong Kong, Basel and Miami. Notable awards include The NOA Prize, The Hunting Art Prize and the 2013 Threadneedle Prize. In 2012 Wright was invited to be an Academician of The Royal West of England Academy.

Wright’s appointment as the Royal Shakespeare Company artist in residence throughout the two-year period of the RSC’s acclaimed ‘Histories’ cycle of plays culminated in exhibitions at the Roundhouse Theatre as the plays were performed, and subsequently at the Royal Academy of Arts London. Wright’s work is held in many important private and corporate collections including Unilever, Linklaters and AstraZeneca.

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