Acrylic, Gold Leaf and Collage on Canvas | 54×34 inches | 2024 | Divine Feminine
She was a waitress at a burger joint in Brooklyn.
The artist saw her moving through the restaurant with the particular quality of presence that some people carry without knowing they carry it — that combination of beauty and ease and complete unselfconsciousness that has always been, and will always be, exactly what painters are looking for. An invitation was extended. Nadia accepted. And so she came to the studio, and the monsteras were arranged behind her, and the silk scarves were draped, and the studio objects were gathered around her with the deliberate casualness of a still life that wants to look effortless — and Nadia reclined on the blue velvet with the natural authority of someone who has always known, on some level, that she was meant to be looked at this carefully.
This is how the great paintings have always been made. Not in academies with professional models in prescribed poses, but in the encounter between an artist and a specific human being in a specific moment — the Brooklyn restaurant, the Tuesday afternoon, the waitress who said yes.
Odalisque places Nadia in a tradition that runs from Ingres' great reclining nudes through Matisse's jewel-bright odalisques to the contemporary Brooklyn studio where a painter surrounded her with monsteras and silk and gold leaf and the accumulated objects of a creative life. The title is Ingres' — that word that conjures the harem paintings of the Orientalist tradition, the reclining female figure as the subject of the Western gaze — but this painting does something different with it. Because Nadia is not passive. She is not decorative. She reclines with the complete authority of a woman who chose to be here, who knows exactly what she is doing, who meets the painting's attention with her own.
Her gaze is turned away — not in submission but in thought, in the particular inwardness of a person comfortable enough in their body and their surroundings to not need to perform attention for the viewer. She is thinking something. She is somewhere the painting cannot quite follow. That privacy, that interiority, is the most contemporary and the most human element in a work that otherwise breathes with the rich, sensuous, colour-saturated air of the great figurative tradition.
And the world she reclines in — what a world. The monsteras press forward with their extraordinary split-leaf architecture, green and vital and completely alive, the studio's tropical heart. The blue velvet beneath her catches the light in deep indigo waves. The silk scarves — orange and teal and red — tumble across her with the loose abundance of a wardrobe raided joyfully. Studio objects anchor the composition. And behind everything, pressed into the surface, collaged into the background, caught in the gold leaf that turns the upper reaches of the canvas into something between a Byzantine altarpiece and a Brooklyn afternoon — the accumulated material of a creative life, layered and luminous and entirely itself.
The gold leaf is not decoration. It is a halo. Not for Nadia specifically — for the moment. For the particular quality of afternoon light in a Brooklyn studio when the monsteras are green and the velvet is blue and a woman from a burger restaurant is reclining among silk scarves, thinking her private thoughts, while someone who saw her and asked her to stay is making something that will last long after both of them are gone.
✦ Original, one-of-a-kind painting ✦ Acrylic, gold leaf and collage on canvas ✦ 54 × 34 inches ✦ Created 2024 ✦ Part of the Divine Feminine series ✦ Ships rolled in a tube ✦ Free worldwide shipping
Stretched Canvas Delivery For collectors who prefer to receive this work pre-stretched and ready to hang, please note that due to its exceptional scale, oversized freight shipping costs are at the client's expense. I'm happy to provide a freight quote tailored to your location — simply contact me before purchasing. Alternatively, your preferred art handler or framer can stretch the canvas locally upon arrival.
She was a waitress in Brooklyn. Then she was this.
Acrylic, Gold Leaf and Collage on Canvas | 54×34 inches | 2024 | Divine Feminine
She was a waitress at a burger joint in Brooklyn.
The artist saw her moving through the restaurant with the particular quality of presence that some people carry without knowing they carry it — that combination of beauty and ease and complete unselfconsciousness that has always been, and will always be, exactly what painters are looking for. An invitation was extended. Nadia accepted. And so she came to the studio, and the monsteras were arranged behind her, and the silk scarves were draped, and the studio objects were gathered around her with the deliberate casualness of a still life that wants to look effortless — and Nadia reclined on the blue velvet with the natural authority of someone who has always known, on some level, that she was meant to be looked at this carefully.
This is how the great paintings have always been made. Not in academies with professional models in prescribed poses, but in the encounter between an artist and a specific human being in a specific moment — the Brooklyn restaurant, the Tuesday afternoon, the waitress who said yes.
Odalisque places Nadia in a tradition that runs from Ingres' great reclining nudes through Matisse's jewel-bright odalisques to the contemporary Brooklyn studio where a painter surrounded her with monsteras and silk and gold leaf and the accumulated objects of a creative life. The title is Ingres' — that word that conjures the harem paintings of the Orientalist tradition, the reclining female figure as the subject of the Western gaze — but this painting does something different with it. Because Nadia is not passive. She is not decorative. She reclines with the complete authority of a woman who chose to be here, who knows exactly what she is doing, who meets the painting's attention with her own.
Her gaze is turned away — not in submission but in thought, in the particular inwardness of a person comfortable enough in their body and their surroundings to not need to perform attention for the viewer. She is thinking something. She is somewhere the painting cannot quite follow. That privacy, that interiority, is the most contemporary and the most human element in a work that otherwise breathes with the rich, sensuous, colour-saturated air of the great figurative tradition.
And the world she reclines in — what a world. The monsteras press forward with their extraordinary split-leaf architecture, green and vital and completely alive, the studio's tropical heart. The blue velvet beneath her catches the light in deep indigo waves. The silk scarves — orange and teal and red — tumble across her with the loose abundance of a wardrobe raided joyfully. Studio objects anchor the composition. And behind everything, pressed into the surface, collaged into the background, caught in the gold leaf that turns the upper reaches of the canvas into something between a Byzantine altarpiece and a Brooklyn afternoon — the accumulated material of a creative life, layered and luminous and entirely itself.
The gold leaf is not decoration. It is a halo. Not for Nadia specifically — for the moment. For the particular quality of afternoon light in a Brooklyn studio when the monsteras are green and the velvet is blue and a woman from a burger restaurant is reclining among silk scarves, thinking her private thoughts, while someone who saw her and asked her to stay is making something that will last long after both of them are gone.
✦ Original, one-of-a-kind painting ✦ Acrylic, gold leaf and collage on canvas ✦ 54 × 34 inches ✦ Created 2024 ✦ Part of the Divine Feminine series ✦ Ships rolled in a tube ✦ Free worldwide shipping
Stretched Canvas Delivery For collectors who prefer to receive this work pre-stretched and ready to hang, please note that due to its exceptional scale, oversized freight shipping costs are at the client's expense. I'm happy to provide a freight quote tailored to your location — simply contact me before purchasing. Alternatively, your preferred art handler or framer can stretch the canvas locally upon arrival.
She was a waitress in Brooklyn. Then she was this.
