I’m interested in the in between places. Eccentric old buildings, off season park equipment and lonely roadside vistas. I love theatricality and how a few simple props can suggest a story. I photograph discarded objects in the street to use in my compositions, weaving new narratives in along with the lost ones. Sometimes I paint directly on found objects or patterned papers. I prefer it when things are slightly ambiguous, leaving room for multiple interpretations of a scene. This creates a dreamlike atmosphere which is enhanced by anachronistic or surreal elements. Figures often appear distant or obscured or are repeated over and over. These characters act out intimate plays of human emotion that resonate with current events and personal stories.

 

As a scenic artist Lacey Bryant (b. Louisville, KY, raised SF bay area) paints haunted houses and stage sets for ttheme parks and theatres. She also carves sculpture for parades such as the annual SF Chinese New Year parade and SF Pride. This occupation flows into her own art practice, providing visual inspiration as well as a wide range of production skills. Her work in oil is often composed from multiple sources: life, photo reference and imagination. These paintings range from large atmospheric pieces to intimate portraits on cigar boxes. Diorama, murals and installation are natural extensions of her work in theatre. Her work is woven together by repeated symbolic motifs and by a tension between and nostalgia and strangeness.

 

In 2019 Lacey collaborated with  Modern Eden Gallery to release “The Slow Tarot,” a collection of 81 oil paintings that reimagined the iconography associated the classic tarot fortune telling cards. An undertaking that took over 6 years, the Slow Tarot opened to critical acclaim, debuting both as a gallery exhibition and a collection of card sized, fine art prints. The 2nd printing of this deck is currently available through Modern Eden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“Lacey Bryant creates a pervasive ambiance of both nostalgia and estrangement, and familiarity with undercurrents of the unknown…Whereas with many paintings audiences examine what is on the canvas, it is far more intriguing in Bryant’s works to examine that peculiar disparity of what is seen and what lies just beyond; where connections are made and lost between these episodic vignettes: crows upon a set table for a tea party in the rain, or the anonymous figure braiding another’s hair on a bed in a field covered with snow. Each one of these small stories are at once fashioned together and fall asunder,  grasping to be reformed into coherency from some time long ago.”

 

"Common elements that bind these illustrations together: grassy fields, spiral staircases that seem to lead nowhere, or even curtains seem to be often used as significant figurative connections. They frame each scene’s composition of inherent dichotomies: of the building up and breaking down, of plasticity and yet the organic assemblage of the dreamscape — which is not just a dream as it contains elements of reality. Each one of Bryant’s female characters look similar, but differ in age, size, or other small physical characteristics; it’s left unclear whether they intend to represent one woman’s travels through a surrealist subconscious or if they are all explorations of many different paths by disparate women. Bryant’s use of found wood, of which the ones at Modern Eden what look to be cabinet doors for kitchens, offer more textured layers of history, memory, and repurpose. In this way, Bryant’s paintings, left with traces of others’ histories and including ambiguous applications of ever-changing memories to a static picture plane, invite audiences to not only attempt to read into Bryant’s intentions, but to find personal meaning as well."

 

-Monique Delaunay. Editor, SF Art Enthusiast, 2014

 

 

 

"Simply put, Lacey is building a world.  Or maybe she's a window, through which we can see what she sees; the things she paints are not directly related to each other, but they occupy the same ecosystem, as clearly as salt grass  and snowy egrets.  A person describing a world might notice only the key predators, but through Lacey's work we see it all, bugs and trees, decomposition and blossoms, land and sea and sky and doors.  Her world is all soaked in strange familiarity, uneasy comfort, the persistence of fragile things."

 

-Kai Stewart, 2011