‘Crescent City Instantiate’ at 600 Julia Street in June

Crescent City Instantiate

*Instantiate (v):
     1. represent as or by an instance.
     2. (of a universal or abstract concept) have an instance;
     be represented by an actual example.
 

Recent oil paintings by New Orleans artist Stephanie Reed recreate moments from her lived experience with a loving kindness and even-handed fidelity to form. Reed transcribes light, color and shape to canvas in a practice of “being with” scenes she has witnessed/captured that range from quiet solitude to boisterous festivity. In this meditative dive, time slows and intimate slices of specific worlds unfold, invoked by visceral layers of brush and palette knife strokes. The paintings bear the accumulative marks of the artist’s patient and persistent gaze doggedly seeking form and memory. Reed’s approach to imagery is sincere but not literal, and the paintings resist reduction to the merely illustrative and mutate upon closer inspection, indulging in painterly gestures and layered dynamic abstractions.