Lyla Duey, 2nd Place Winner

Winner of the Spring 2012 Competition

Stranger in a Strange Land

Artwork that explores alienation.

GROUP PHOTO

oil on wood, 7.5 x 9.5 in

nfs

artist statement

Inspired by a year spent as a foreigner in a tiny coastal town in Spain, my “Separation, Belonging” series explores how distance and relocation can affect identity, and the importance of belonging. Just as a child might play with dolls to process his or her interactions with others, I created simple, box-like figures out of paper and arranged them as if in a theater, acting out community events in which I participated.

“Group Photo” is a painting inspired by a specific moment that I felt acknowledged the gap between my own struggle to belong and the community’s fostering of group identity. While posing for a quick photo, a friend noticed that I wasn’t wearing the colors of their matching outfits, so she found somebody to lend me a pink bandana. The inclusion of myself as a finger is a reference to the story of the patron saint of the town – Saint Sebastian – whose finger was given to the town as a token of gratitude for helping out a ship that, while carrying the Saint’s remains, accidentally landed on the town’s shores. In “Group Photo,” the finger – a foreigner - stands with the others to pose, the pink bandana linking it to the group while the odd form keeps it separate.

bio

Lyla Duey received her BFA in painting from Tyler School of Art in Philadelphia. In 2010 she spent a year in the Valencia region of Spain on a Fulbright Scholarship, where she began her focus on creating paper constructions to model the world around her. Her oil paintings evolved from exploring the foreign outside and her attempts to belong, to dissecting the perspective of her interior space. Lyla has recently been accepted as a President’s Scholar at the Rhode Island School of Design in Providence, RI and will graduate in 2014 with her MFA in painting.

Selected Exhibitions

International Art Festival Competition, Museum of Russian Art, Jersey City, NJ, 2012

15^th Regional Juried Show, Newburyport Art Association, Newburyport, MA, 2012

Annual Juried Competition, Schoolhouse Gallery, Provincetown, MA, 2012

Projekt30 June Exhibition, online juried exhibition at projekt30.com, 2012

Graduate Arts Soiree, MIT Media Lab, Cambridge, MA, 2012

Pop: Up Next, Chestnut Hill Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2010

The Art of Text, The Writing Center, Philadelphia, PA, 2010

The Good Fight: A BFA Exhibition, Stella Elkins Tyler Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2009

Clambake Supreme, Stella Elkins Tyler Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2009

Nostalgia Is A Dirty Word, 504 South Street, Philadelphia, PA, 2009

XIV Collaborative, 504 South Street, Philadelphia, PA, 2009

Likeable Art, City Hall Gallery, Philadelphia, PA, 2008

lyla duey

providence, rhode island [USA]

www.lyladuey.com

lyla.duey@gmail.com

ArtSceneToday Q&A

Q: Where do you see yourself in the art scene today?

A: I see myself as a young artist who combines traditional materials and techniques with a contemporary sense of the theatrical still life.

Q: What is in your inspiration?

A: I find inspiration through my interactions with others, and in trying to understand how I relate to the world around me. My year spent living as a foreigner in a small town provided endless opportunities to reevaluate the importance of belonging, and my efforts to assimilate or acknowledge the distance between myself and the community in which I lived became the fuel for my series titled, “Separation, Belonging.”

Q: What are your challenges?

A: I try to find a balance between the somewhat comical and the somewhat disconcerting, without pushing either side too far into kitschy or disturbing.

Q: How did you/do you choose your medium?

A: With oil paints I can continue to work towards finer detail and smoother blending. I mix a medium of sun-thickened linseed oil, Venetian turpentine and turpentine, and make my own gesso out of marble dust and rabbit skin glue. I’ve found that this absorbent gesso ground helps me to control my lines and slowly build up the layers of my painting.

Q: Which artist has influenced you the most?

A: I've always been a huge fan of the Dutch and Flemish artists from the 15th to 17th centuries, particularly Jan Van Eyck and Jan Cornelisz Verspronck. As for a more contemporary influence, I am inspired by the intimacy in Giorgio Morandi's subtle coloring, and his ability to give character and life to bottles and boxes.

GO TO

Stranger in a Strange Land

Exhibition Page

other works by the artist