DONT LOOK AWAY: An artist draws her paintbrush against violence
Artist Elizabeth Lana reaches toward Ukraine with a challenging New Mexico show
HARK!
I hear…an art war….
Paintbrushes against AK-47s?
Good luck with that, right?
OK, so in the short term, art will never triumph over brute force.
But in the long run?
On hearing of the horrific, horrible invasion of peaceful little Ukraine by Vladimir Putin, that despicable despot with the catastrophically cynical, heinously hypocritical worldview, people like Elizabeth Lana were not ready to just say, “Oh well, good luck, Ukraine–what else is on?”
A California native who was educated and trained in San Francisco (where I met her, back in the Nineties), now living in Pittsburgh (ironically, my hometown), Lana was outraged by the invasion of and decided an upcoming show in the Southwest would be a perfect opportunity to do her small part to help a beleaguered country.
Her showing at Houshang’s Gallery in Santa Fe–beginning with a Friday, June 24, reception–is not just an opportunity to murmur “hmmm, nice…beautiful”; it’s a challenge.
DONT LOOK AWAY, Lana calls the show, which is subtitled: Depicting the Crises in Ukraine. She is donating a portion of the sales to the CORE Foundation by Sean Penn for Ukraine Refugees.
Harking (so to speak) back to a class assignment I “helped” her write back in those Frisco days, I wrote a mini-bio for her to prep for her Santa Fe show:
Raised outside of Los Angeles, trained and educated in San Francisco, visual artist Elizabeth Lana's vision is informed by the blunt muscularity of Pittsburgh, her adopted home. She has been displayed there, as well as California and New Mexico.
The award-winning Lana's vision transformed into powerful, emotional, even existential abstracts–informed by social injustices, the pandemic and now the plight of Ukraine, its people struggling for existence in the face of brutal, unrelenting oppressors.
Indeed, a work directly inspired by this history-shifting attack devolves and restructures the Ukrainian flag, with the emerging work punctuated by drops of tears…or is that the sweat of indefatigable souls?
Here, as elsewhere, the artist steps away, allowing the viewer's mind and emotions to reach conclusions.
The Washington Post acknowledged her provocative brush, in "The Best Art of the Pandemic."
Sure, I’m biased.
Even so, her work is thrilling and powerful, elegance nuanced with almost savage touches.
This one is called We Must Look.
She doubles down, with Slava Ukraini
To me, violence lurks beneath the surface of her ostensibly quiet, soulful work.
Do you see a gun, here?:
Here is Thoughts and Prayers:
While I highly recommend seeing her work, in person, if at all possible, if you can’t make her Santa Fe show, check her Instagram page for videos and more.
The show’s title is a great reminder that, when we see suffering, injustice, inexcusable violence….
DONT LOOK AWAY