Self-Portrait
Lucy Kissel
Oil on Canvas, 2009

Lucy Kissel: Lucy Kissel is a junior at Brown University, where she edits a literary magazine called The Round. She intends to study American Civilization and Literary Arts.

From the Artist:

I’ve been painting now for several years, with an infrequency that precludes technical mastery. Each finished painting sepulchers one or two of its predecessors, and, like the stream of Heraclitus, I can never seem to dip into the same well-mixed color twice. But my canvases graciously accept distortion, satisfying my mimetic inclinations.

The scenes that intrigue me most fall on either end of the dramatic spectrum. I’m rhapsodic about a spectral fog and a grand rainstorm. I admire the litotes of Maggie Tobin’s oil paintings on vellum and the hyperbole of Marilyn Minter’s enamel and aluminum creations. I’ve imitated the medium of the former and the implement of the latter (Ms. Minter tends to swap her brushes for fingers when lines demand bleariness). Each artist shrouds recognizable forms in evocation, a nifty trick.

Keith Waldrop, a favorite poet of mine, has applied Vygotsky’s distinction between ‘meaning’ and ‘sense’ in language to visual art.‘ Meaning’ being a denotation, and ‘sense’ a sum of connotations. To ignore the one is to misread, and to overlook the other is to abridge. Observation is paramount to my endeavors with paint. As an observer, I aspire always to be informed by both content and intent.