Eleanor Ray

Eleanor Ray

Vail Field

2011

Oil on Panel

5 x 7"

Opening

2011

Oil on Panel

7 x 5"

Lookout

2012

Oil on Panel

7 x 5"

Bond Street

2012

Oil on panel

5 x 6"

Police Lights

2011

Oil on Panel

5 x 7"

Icy Window

2012

Oil on Panel

5 x 3 15/16"

Waterfront Warehouses

2012

Oil on Panel

4 x 4 7/8"

Paintings on the Drafting Table

2012

Oil on Panel

4 x 4 7/8"

Apartment 16

2012

Oil on Panel

3 7/8 x 5"

Into the Studio

2012

Oil on Panel

3 15/16 x 6 1/16"

Charlotte's Studio with Sheets

2013

Oil on Panel

4 x 4 15/16"

Studio Evening

2012

Oil on Panel

3 1/2 x 5"

These paintings remind me of so many things I like-- Fairfield Porter, Avigdor Arikha, and a New England college (in the 1980s, for some reason). Their size makes them charming, and I enjoy the thickness of the brushwork as it relates to the size of the panel, as well as the ordinaryness of the images. The best ones, for me, combine that ordinaryness with something a bit strange. The artist is very young, and went to Amherst then New York Studio School. I found out about her from Jerry Saltz's article on his ten best shows of the year. 

From an interview: "Painting a familiar place becomes easier for me when it appears unfamiliar, usually because I am seeing something more basic -- its abstract qualities -- rather than my particular associations with the place. I find that I can see places more clearly when I'm a bit removed from them -- if I'm returning after a long absence, for example, or if I'm simply seeing the place in a new kind of weather, out of the corner of my eye, or through a window. I often become more interested in painting the places I've lived after moving away from them."

"Windows and doorways organize so much of what we see, especially in cities. I enjoy watching a familiar view change over time in relation to the constant of the window. Often the things outside seem to relate to the window's shape, or the grid of its panes, in the way that the interior of a painting relates to its own edges. In paintings, windows and obscured views have a sense of frozen expectation -- of something forever about to happen, or about to be revealed. The frame of a window or doorway takes on a clear relationship to the painting's flat surface. And it can have a figurative presence that remains anonymous but not totally impartial."