“This is one of those canvases that I need a month to recover from before I can continue!” Lorian Gwynn speaks passionately about her work, and with humor, as if she were talking about family. She dislikes fixed structures, but still manages to create her own personal and contemporary order precisely from the chaos that the everyday brings. Her work revolves around intuition, chance, and the discovery of unexpected connections. Her images conjure up reality as layered and dynamic, like a stream of experiences. This also means, as she puts it, that her works are sometimes rebellious, imposing their own rules on the artist. The answer to this unruliness is: looking at the image, over and over and over again. Her paintings emerge from a process she sees more as breathing than as a plan. “I begin with several layers of gesso, followed by acrylic paint, to de-emphasize the white canvas. The blank surface isn’t a void, but a silence that first needs to be softened. By applying layers, the canvas can already begin to live, breathe, develop a skin. This creates the space for me to begin, a place where time can slowly settle.”

In her first solo exhibition at the gallery, we present a series of recent works, mostly portraits. Guided by her intuition, Gwynn essentially explores the physical and psychological realities of human existence through painting. For the smaller portraits, she used people from her inner circle as models, sometimes using a photograph as a starting point. Gwynn: “The better I know someone, the less guidance I need. A glance, a small movement, unfolds in thin layers of oil paint. Sometimes I get to know someone better by painting them; sometimes, the process primarily helps me realize how I see others. What I find beautiful is always searching and feeling that there is no absolute truth or finish line.”

Gwynn’s portraits are part of a long painterly tradition. Her expressive painting does originate from a linear search for resemblance to an individual. Yet, in their transparent layering, they ultimately reveal a contemporary, fragmented, and cinematic perspective. Gwynn has the ability to draw the viewer into the construction of her evocative and poetic fiction. She says that the present is central to her work. By this, she means the moments shared with loved ones and friends, the turmoil of daily life, but also larger, more general, and current themes such as the idea of transformation and connection. What Lingers, What Shifts explores the expressive power of the painted image in the face of continuous change.