Lisa Milroy
(1959 - ) |
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Trompe l'oeil painting everyday objects, especially shoes Art Work
| Name: |
Lisa Milroy |
| Gender: |
Female |
| Place of Birth: |
Vancouver, Canada |
| Nationality: |
American |
| Birth: |
1959 |
| Death: |
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| Website: |
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| Past Auctions: |
Click Here |
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Quick Facts
| Known For: |
Trompe l'oeil painting everyday objects, especially shoes |
| Medium: |
Oil |
| Method: |
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| Style: |
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| Fine Art Profession(s): |
Painting
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Biography
Lisa Milroy trained at Goldsmiths and was one of a group of artists responsible for the resurgence of painting in Britain, reacting against the stern figuration of the London School and the influence of American abstraction, a new generation sought to blur the boundaries between realism and abstract and conceptual concerns, sometimes adding doses of levity and sensuality to the mix.
Milroy is fascinated by the stuff of everyday life (as were her influential predecessors such as Edouard Manet) But the satisfying solidity of her paintings does not mean that they can be read as realistic. Her compositions all have in common a complete lack of hierarchy between the objects represented, and they are not shown in natural settings, but against blank backgrounds. They sometimes appear to be lying across the surface of the canvas, or are spaced into constellations, alternating between deep recession and proximity. What always comes to the fore is their paintedness.
In the 1990s Milroy explored new subject matter. A Japanese Geisha smiles down from Kimono (1996). Sky {1997-8) is a painting of deep blue space and clouds. Kimono represents a woman decorated for display and purchase. She signifies today's consumerism, and also has an art historical resonance, referring back to the Japanese prints popular in nineteenth-century Pans (both Edouard Manet and Berthe Morisot put prints in portraits, and Milroy has also made the prints themselves her subject matter). Sky could be read as a parallel work, concerned with the commodification of nature in contemporary society, but it is also a painting of emptiness. Having pushed to these extremes, in 2000 Milroy made works explicitly about the practice of painting itself, in a nod perhaps to Philip Guston. These include Painting a Picture and also A Day in the Studio, which lays out, storyboard style, the routine of the artist going about her work. |
Samples of Work
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