Theodore Boyer. Mystic. Mother. Lover

About

After a decade spent working in abstraction that mined the metaphysical and cosmological realms, the Los Angeles-based artist Theodore Boyer is reemerging with a new suite of narrative-based figurative paintings for  Theodore Boyer: Mystic. Mother. Lover. his solo debut with Praz- Delavallade Los Angeles, opening November 10. 

At the start of 2020, Boyer returned to the figure with a series of paintings of his wife, Jamie, captured from memory in domestic settings, from memory or translated from photographs of her in natural environments spanning from Mexico to Morocco. By merging the various dye techniques employed in his previous bodies of abstraction, Boyer renders a psychological (and psychedelic) underpainting—representing a meditative state of the unconscious mind—atop which images emerge. The figures are rendered in high chroma oil and casein which create tension and depth between the two materials. Sections of the paintings allow the viewer to peer into the mystical backgrounds acting as a portal into another dimension.

“Every painting in this show represents personal tragedies I’ve experienced since before the pandemic.” says Boyer. “Looking to my inner self allows me to illustrate these subjects from my unconscious. The show is a celebratory, not mournful, end to a previously tragic era.” As Carl Jung stated: “Your vision will become clear only when you can look into your own heart. Who looks outside, dreams; who looks inside, awakes.”

In Luncheon With the Devil, which leans on references from Manet and Goya, Boyer depicts friends in a blissful picnic while an anthropomorphic ibex looms as a specter of doom. The Visitors offers a celebratory toasting scene between Jamie and an artist friend from Prague, who stands in as a spirit guide arriving in the aftermath of tragedy. Mystic Mother provides a glimpse into a Halloween celebration with Jamie as a witch, or alchemist/ healer, while Mother Lover isolates Jamie in a body of water as an Aphrodite figure. Finally, a trio of floral still-life paintings—I’m Sorry; Get Well Soon; and Congratulations—offer subliminal messages cycling through the process of apology via imagery on the classical planters holding the arrangements. These three works mark times of tragedy, remorse, and redemption and act as a coda to this heady dream sequence.

“I’m never in the paintings, just as I’m never a figure in my dreams,” explains Boyer. “I’m really just a voyeur in the reality of this world.”

Theodore Boyer is a Los Angeles-based artist who received his BFA from the School of Visual Arts, New York. Boyer’s work has been the subject of solo shows at Shulamit Nazarian, HILDE, Patrick Painter, Inc., and the Bombay Beach Biennale and included in several notable group shows: Portrait of a Generation curated by Kathy Grayson at The Hole (New York), LA On Fire curated by Michael Slenske at Wilding Cran Gallery (Los Angeles), Everything Has Its Place curated by Kathy Batista at Sevil Dolmaci Gallery (Istanbul), and Teknolust: OBJECTOPHILIC FUTURES curated by Ben Lee Ritchie Handler at WOAW Gallery (Hong Kong). His work has also been featured in Modern Painters, Forbes, Cultured, and Autre and his work resides in the collection of Kleefeld Contemporary (Long Beach).