January 12 — February 16, 2013
Cassandra
Rosalyn Bodycomb
Rosalyn Bodycomb’s figurative paintings capture modern-day Greece—and, in many ways, a universal humanity—in all its vividness and complexity. The works, at once kinetic and peaceful, are full of light and water and life. But an undertow of sadness, loss and impending chaos tugs just below the surface. Or, in a work like the metaphorically apt Samothraki II, a broken chair lying amid a lush landscape, a sense of ruin is right there on the surface, the trammel of history already visible amid the timelessness of lived life. The paintings were inspired by Bodycomb’s 2008 visit to Greece. "My impression was of a beautiful ancient country with a troubled political past, an unsure economic present, and a disenfranchised population," she says. She titled the show Cassandra after the royal beauty whom the god Apollo cursed with the agonizing gift of prophecy that will never be believed.
A Brooklyn painter with deep ties to Texas, Bodycomb has had recent solo exhibitions in New York City, including with the Durst Organization and the Nohra Haime Gallery. Born in Hawaii in 1958 and launching her painting career in Texas, Bodycomb is part of the Dallas Museum of Art’s permanent collection and was included in the 2005 Texas Biennial in Austin. She has received a Joan Mitchell Foundation Painters and Sculptors Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship and Pollack-Krasner Grant, and has been awarded numerous artist residencies, including the 2013 Pilot Program at The Joan Mitchell Center in New Orleans.