JENELL TAYLOR
Staff Writer
Based in the foothills of Northern California, painter Lexie Loader works to unearth the deeply embedded, nearly forgotten memories of viewers through the hazy imagery of her muted, softly melancholic oil works.
On view through July 23, Loader’s debut solo exhibition, “Warm Light, Cool Shadows,” is housed in the Arnold and Jill Bellowe Family Gallery of Strohl Art Center. Erika Diamond, curator and associate director of Chautauqua Visual Arts Galleries, said she chose to spotlight Loader’s works because of their personal but universal subject matter.
Diamond first came across Loader’s work while serving as a curator for an exhibition catalog produced by I Like Your Work, a publication and podcast hosted by Sydelle Sonkin and Herb Siegel Artistic Director of the Visual Arts Erika b Hess. Diamond included three of Loader’s pieces in “Crafting Home,” an exhibition that was displayed in the Fowler-Kellogg Art Center last year.
“Her pieces were so popular and seemed like a great fit for our CVA Galleries programming,” she said. “I am proud to say that her exhibition here is the first solo exhibition of her career.”
Loader’s paintings are evocative of impressionist interiors, with smooth, blurred edges meant to explore the familiar relationship one has with their environment and frequently used everyday objects.
“A freshly stacked dish rack, an unmade bed or a half-used tube of toothpaste resting above a shiny bathroom sink” are among the objects that Diamond said are intimately portrayed in Loader’s works.
In “Warm Light, Cool Shadows,” the depiction of stillness as translated into the gentle recollection of memory is demonstrated through Loader’s deliberate application of bright, pale tones. The passive use of common household spaces can quickly reduce them to mere backdrops of life — distant, impersonal facets of humanity. However, Loader’s fascination lies within the “narrative provided by these quiet and forgotten scenes,” she said in her artist statement.
Loader’s paintings employ color to unveil a sense of sustained optimism that is felt through monotonous routine. As is typical of remembrance, her pieces “create a tension with the shadows in each composition, as if some parts of the scene are vividly remembered but not others,” Diamond said. Her pieces include hues of blues, purples and greens that exist just below the surface of porcelain sinks, countertops, bookshelves and kitchen titles. “Faint pencil marks leave traces of a compositional plan, as if we can watch her trying to recall an object’s placement in the room,” Diamond said.
The various perspectives, markings and color selections in Loader’s works are curtained by a layer of enigma, shifting and morphing in the same elusive manner as one’s personal, tender memories. “Warm Light, Cool Shadows,” welcomes this uncertainty and invites viewers to be open enough to receive it.
