AWAKE: PAINTINGS BY MAYA BRODSKY

Boston-based painter Maya Brodsky exhibits a powerful array of realist oil paintings that revere the past and offer tender glimpses into everyday life. Brodsky’s works, the largest being 14×11 inches, offer a striking contrast to the monumental scale seen in much of contemporary painting. Intimacy is achieved not only in the physical size of each work, but in the quiet moments she so beautifully renders—depictions of slumbering couples amidst tousled, wrinkled bedding as bright shards of light invade darkened rooms and cascade over sleeping faces. Brodsky approaches her chosen setting and subjects with a nostalgic eye. The moody interiors occupied by elderly relatives remind us of the inevitability of aging. Vacant rooms untouched by the passage of time and arranged with a lifetime of accumulated belongings echo the spirit of absent inhabitants. Through precisionist brushstrokes, the artist packs an astonishing amount of detailed imagery in small surface areas—from weathered patterned wallpaper to the folds of assorted colored blankets and to the friends and relatives she has chosen as subjects.

Maya Brodsky (American, born 1984)
top: Optimist, 2013   On loan from the Collection of Robert Watson and Patrick Gallagher
bottom: A Problem is A Body of Water, 2011  On loan from the Collection of Diane Gordon
Both works: Oil on mylar mounted on panel