Maya Brym

Two planes superimposing, Brym’s works represent a threshold between still life and landscape painting, between domestic interior and the reality of the world outside. The paintings depict and transform objects and artifacts from the artist’s own domestic surroundings. Vessels and animal figures she has owned for decades interact with fruit and vegetables, plastic bottles, items sourced from the internet, and more abstract, invented forms. Concerns about ecology, sexuality, economics and class, embedded in the choice and transformation of specific objects set against landscape, are interwoven with the technology and material processes of acrylic paint.

Meaning in still life is also always entwined with painting as a material practice, which reflects the technology and economic constraints of the artist’s particular context. Employing multi-layered transparencies, interplays of light and dark, and unusual color harmonies, Brym coaxes a sense of human warmth and abiding joy out of her medium.

Courtesy of Morgan Lehman Gallery