_“Clear Moon, Frost Soon” is an old saying that most agree is an accurate predictor. The Old Farmer’s Almanac explains: “When the night sky is clear, Earth’s surface cools rapidly—there is no cloud cover to keep the heat in. If the night is clear enough to see the Moon and the temperature drops enough, frost will form. Expect a chilly morning!”
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Larissa Lockshin paints verdant abstractions on unprimed, hand-dyed satin. With pearly fabric, Lockshin suggests landscapes and horizons, balancing crude wood carving and matte textures with a vivid, romantic color palette.
Lockshin’s practice has evolved to hand-dyed fabrics and hand-carved frames that blur the lines between painting and drawing. Her hand conjures hearts, stars, birds, petals, quivering grasses are tugged in opposition as they dance on luminous supports. The gestures tend toward soft ocellated forms, mottled marks and smudgy vegetal blots in a garden. These wavering strokes mimic the shape of thoughts, evanescent waves of emotion, as if the wind might change course at any moment, carrying wisps of cinder or a hint of morning frost.
Lockshin’s work is inherently curious–about itself, and about the world at large. She seeks to reconcile “high art” and “craft” through her use of unconventional mediums, rough-hewn markings, and rich pigments all the while maintaining an invitational entry into her work. The use of traditionally feminine fabrics and dyeing processes serve as a nod and a challenge to established painting conventions–literally expanding the borders, utilizing the frame as another generative surface. Even this soft wood appears gilded, and the carved clouds, butterflies, and flowers evoke a familiar poetic nostalgia (think: initials scratched into bark) without being sentimental or overwrought. Crude butterflies pin down the corners of the gossamer, recalling a fine tapestry, a nourishing visual feast. Lockshin’s works are in rhyme with each other. As the days pass and the seasons change, a lavender-tinted horizon (Untitled, Sky Kingdom, 2023) bleeds to a sudden summer storm, fields are bent as if by the force of a sudden gale (Untitled, Flat Out, 2023), and swept into a cool meadow backlit only by the sheen of unprimed champagne satin–daisies under the raw moon (Untitled, Evening Jewel, 2023). As the light fades, her ethereal palette deepens.
Something is being revealed to Lockshin, and to us. The cloud cover is clearing up–a jewel peeks through, we perceive headlights through a dark wheat field (Untitled, Express Train, 2023). These works capture various states of being: each operates as a formal experiment, a map to reach these “states”. Lockshin’s process is one of enchantment, she describes “sifting through layers of earth, opaque and burdensome, finding little gems, dozens of trails of candy heading in different directions. I try to follow them all, but I am lost.” Perhaps this is the goal–to be mesmerized, swept up by the momentum of Lockshin’s compositions into a heady atmosphere of fervor and zeal, and return transformed, windswept, wide-eyed but firmly grounded.