I could have stayed all night!  I am usually so nervous for the opening of an exhibition -- it's like being an actor before the curtain rises on opening night -- wishing I were anyplace ELSE.  But for the first time EVER, I was excited for the opening of "REAL: Elizabeth Barlow and Willard Dixon" at Gallerie Citi.  Maybe I have a few enough of these openings under my belt by now?  Or maybe I am just so proud of this new work and wanted to share it with my friends and collectors.  It was truly a pleasure to see familiar faces and be able to show them what I've been working on for the past 8 months.

It was also such a privilege to share the exhibition with Willard Dixon.  He is a noted Bay Area artist, who paints beautifully in every genre -- landscape, figurative and still life.  In this exhibition, he is sharing some of his new trompe l'oeil paintings -- they are astonishingly "real" -- but still retain an other worldly air found in most of his work.

"REAL", at Gallerie Citi, 1115 Howard Avenue, Burlingame, CA, until November 6, 2015.
www.gallerieciti.com

This is another new painting waiting to be revealed at the Opening Reception of REAL -- a two person exhibition with Willard Dixon and myself at Gallerie Citi -- September 19, from 5-7pm.  The exhibition runs through November 6. 

"Yin/Yang," Oil on Linen, 24 x 30 

For several years now I have been working to entwine the traditions of still life painting and portraiture.  I call these paintings "portraits in absentia."  I use people's belongings, most recently their shoes, as stand-ins for their visages or bodies, to create "portraits" that illustrate their lives and stories.

On September 19 at Gallerie Citi I will unveil a new evolution of these "potraits in absentia."  In these new paintings I am using the "uniforms" that many of us have in our closets -- jeans and white shirts.  These uniforms are ubiquitous in our society, yet they are highly personal.   A pair of jeans or a white shirt is a form of cultural anthropology -- a piece of archeology from our time -- but each garment also retains the very real essence of the person who wears it.

My new series will be shown at Gallerie Citi in Silicon Valley (Burlingame, CA) in the two-person exhibition REAL (which I will share with the extraordinary Willard Dixon), from September 19 -- November 6.  There is an opening reception on September 19 from 5-7pm -- please come if you can!

Here is a peek at one of the new works.  It is a "portrait" of a couple and it illumines their love story and their zest for living.

"Embrace," oil on linen, 24 x 36"