Lisa Golightly at Billis Williams

This October 12 Billis Williams Gallery is presenting Lisa Golightly: New Paintings. Rooted in the concept of capturing memories, Lisa Golightly’s paintings are a nod to the past as viewed through a contemporary eye. Golightly finds her inspiration in old photographs – sorting through the abandoned records of other people’s lives provides her with unique insight into others’ personal histories. There is a nostalgia to the imagery – and yet it is not personal to the artist. She is an impartial viewer – immortalizing in paint something someone else deemed special enough to capture on film during a time before the current moment of endless digital photographs stored unseen on our devices. There will be an opening reception on October 12, 4-7pm.

Golightly’s painterly style is heavy on brush work but her use of high gloss enamel on aluminum gives the paintings a smooth finish that nods to their photographic source material. The color palette is reduced and the forms are pared down to their essential shapes but the textures she is able to attain are elaborate and elegant. Golightly is using the absence of detail to allow her subjects to resonate on a universal level – it is as if the viewer is looking at memories buried deep in time that could be their own.

Memory is in constant motion: changing, evolving or disappearing. While Golightly’s work often contains a sense of stillness and quiet, the paintings exist on the edge of reality and acknowledge the elusiveness and subjectivity of human memory. Exploring the intersection of the original photograph and the personal histories of the viewer, these paintings ultimately speak to how unstable and easily altered photographs and memory are – both of which we so heavily rely on and yet are never as concrete as they might seem.