Lyndsey Jameson, The Room, oil on canvas, 20 x 16"

A person standing at a window looking out—or, alternatively, looking in from the outside—is a cipher for a limitless amount of human emotion. It can be coded as mystery, obsession, introspection, discovery, detachment and countless other narratives. Houses are bodies and minds, windows are eyes, dark rooms are desires or fears, objects are emotions. Sometimes it’s as simple as interior versus exterior and the literal spaces we occupy. 

Mary Carroll, Poltergeist, acrylic on cradled panel, 24 x 18"

One of the pieces in the show is Carroll’s haunting interior scene Poltergeist, showing an oddly stacked bouquet of chairs. The stack bears a strong resemblance to a scene in Tobe Hooper’s 1982 film Poltergeist, in which unseen ghosts create a similar arrangement in the seconds it takes for a woman to turn away from her dining room table. Like the film, Carroll turns to the paranormal for her painting. “Since moving into a home built in 1760, my husband and I, in addition to visiting friends and family, have borne witness to a series of unexplained paranormal events,” the artist says. “To reflect on these unsettling and profound occurrences, I stacked these chairs within our home as a reference for this painting. The process became a way to confront and make sense of the tension between what we understand and what we fear. This work is both a personal exploration and an invitation to the viewer to consider the mysteries that exist beyond our knowledge.”

Phillip Thomas, “Road” Scholar, mixed media on canvas, 86 x 53”

In Werneck’s paintings Serene Sense and John’s Letters, the artist uses natural light from nearby windows to illuminate her figures. The illumination of the figures is both literal and figurative. “My art is all about what’s inside me. It’s a way for me to express my inner world and emotions. To me, each piece is a reflection of myself in different moments of life. That’s why I often use female models—they represent my experiences, my feelings, and how I see the world,” Werneck says. “I usually work with young women because they feel like a bridge between my past and the future. There’s something about the innocence they still carry from childhood, mixed with this powerful energy they have about the future, that fascinates me. It’s this mix of purity and maturity that I find so inspiring. It helps me capture feelings of beauty, love, compassion, peace and hope. In a world that could always use more of those things, I think art doesn’t need to be loud or aggressive to make an impact. For me, it’s always soft, romantic, and delicate, even if the themes are heavy.”

Daniela Werneck, Serene Sense, watercolor on Aquabord, 8 x 16”

In Alessi’s paintings, the artist distorts faces to make a point about how body and skin are more important than the substance. “Everything depends on a wrapper from a container and the more the wrapper is captivating the more it seduces and conquers,” Alessi says. “But where is the rest? Where has it disappeared? And here are the figures that touch each other, their body liquefies, changes, transforms, destroys and then recomposes itself but this does not alter the concept of a person, a human being. And it is singular how today a film nominated for five Oscars, The Substance, tells this duality between body and substance, and how it makes us understand that beauty is such a precarious seduction that it melts and then puff…disappears.”

Allen Egan, Practice Time, oil on canvas, 36 x 36"

Egan will be showing two interior paintings, Mission Possible and Practice Time, both of which evoke a sense of nostalgia. “I imagined a time before the advent of sophisticated technology when a child might entertain themselves by being creative and imaginative and hobbies like dance or unusual toys were a form of self-expression, free from the interruptions of modern devices and social media,” the artist says.