PAINT YOUR LIFE! Curated by Ryan Steadman : Opening Reception May 24th, 3-6pm

PAINT YOUR LIFE!

“I have always wanted to paint as a woman, but not as the oppressive and power-mad world thought a woman should paint.” – Alice Neel

Regardless of the position we are born into, we all want to tell our stories from our own perspectives, with clarity, dignity, and a sense of humor. It might seem odd that some still use paint to achieve this in an age of virtual reality, digital algorithms, and AI content, but many do, and occasionally with an excess of skill, charm, and vivacity.

The artists in PAINT YOUR LIFE! choose to show us who they truly are, no matter how difficult, awkward, silly, or even dangerous an act that might be. This type of art is a gift, helping viewers from all walks of life feel a little braver, less alone, or generally more understood. Yet, this powerful desire to share one’s reality is almost always (perhaps necessarily) paired with an equally natural urge to embellish it.

Nietzsche proposed that we intentionally present the images of ourselves we want others to see—but can we ever truly know what others see? We assume everyone perceives the same outer world through their senses, but science continues to prove that isn’t quite true. We now know that the world is revealed less through our immediate sensations and more through mental guesswork. The brain saves energy by quickly basing new perceptions on experience, to the point where our daily surroundings barely even register. Therefore, our genetic differences, core memories, and personal triggers subjectively build what we experience, with our senses only slightly coloring that view. One could hypothesize even further via Consciousness-First and Simulacra theories, but the point is that experience is more biased than we realize.

The subjectivity of truth wasn’t as easy to ignore once the COVID-19 outbreak arrived. Time suddenly felt slow and expansive, echoing older lifestyles that focused primarily on essentials like food, shelter, loved ones, and moments of joy or beauty rather than 10-year plans or TikTok trends. During this period, some turned to nature as a source of healing, while others feared becoming vulnerable to it; some welcomed a slower pace, while others suffered from extreme boredom; and some cherished more time alone, while others endured long periods of loneliness. The pandemic soon became a unique experiment in individual reality—on a societal scale—and for many artists, the experience fundamentally altered their perspectives.

​Despite each of us owning a natural subjectivity, we are all equipped with the same capacities, in varying amounts, for anger, curiosity, surprise, lust, heartbreak, and other human feelings. The artists in this show steadfastly represent the importance of such feelings, trusting, in a sense, in the power of their similarities. They cut across many classifications: self-taught artists like James Castle (1899-1977) and Lavern Kelley (1928-1998), Modern and Contemporary greats like Jörg Immendorff and Lisa Yuskavage; and young, emerging artists, such as India Sachi (b. 2000) and Arisa Yoshioka (b. 2000). The goal was to find a common thread among them: this undeniable urgency to reveal their lived experience.