Anna Glantz: Lichens

About

Though lichens often obscure the carving and lettering on churchyard memorials their form is attractive and headstones look sterile and bleak when cleaned.

-Jack R. Laundon, “Lichens” 1986

For this show, Glantz has produced eight oil paintings of varying scales that move between figuration, almost-landscape and nearly-abstract. Apple greens blend with gallery floor greys and midnight blues. Features emerge from the canvas surface: a stocky foot, a benecklaced goose, the sun rising over a hill, an enamel floral pin. 

While the imagery is mostly recognizable, narrative is consciously pushed to the side. The paintings resist being “about” one thing or another, and instead do something closer to brooding. They fixate and simmer, but often with a lightly decorative touch. Glantz works intuitively, building up the paint slowly over time. As though writing a poem, she edits, revises, and bit by bit, pushes the work toward a moment when the image might lock into place and begin to reverberate on its own.

Anna Glantz (b. Concord, MA, 1989) lives and works in Los Angeles, CA, USA.