The contemporary still-life painter Lynn Veitzer creates beautifully crafted, witty, and sensuous images in which realistically painted ordinary objects become vehicles of multi-layered narratives that refer to certain cultural understandings while retaining a sense of mystery. The artist has noted:
I wish to create paintings that draw upon traditional painting technique yet are relevant to this time. We live in a world transformed by modern intellectual, historical, technological, and cultural developments. The best contemporary art should reflect these changes, yet maintain an element of timelessness.1
Veitzer’s art illustrates this union. Dried oak leaves, pears in a “flock,” old farm tools, “silent” iron bells joined by a gold-toned rope, and a broken glass Christmas ornament from which a butterfly appears to emerge as if from a cocoon have religious and symbolic connotations. At the same time, the works, which often include sumptuous fabrics, are painted in a meticulous style in which vivid colors, varied shapes, and rich textures produce dramatic and poetic effects.
The firm draftsmanship and solid technical underpinning of Veitzer’s art reveals the influence of the art of a number of old masters, including Vermeer, Rembrandt, David, and Caravaggio. Among still-life artists, Veitzer is most indebted to the art of Chardin, Anne Vallayer-Coster, William Harnett, and Emil Carlsen. The Surrealist dimension of her work reflects her appreciation of the works of two women artists, the Mexican painter Remedios Varo (1908-1963) and the Argentinian Leonor Fini (1908-1996), as well as those of René Magritte and Joseph Cornell.
Veitzer was born in 1968 and raised in Omaha, Nebraska. She received her bachelor’s degree from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York. In 1996 she began her formal art training at the New York Academy of Art. In 1998 Veitzer became part of the Water Street Atelier in Brooklyn, New York. She trained with the painter Michael Aviano from 1999 to 2002.
Since making her professional debut in 1999 with a group show at the Grenning Gallery, Sag Harbor, New York, Veitzer has been exhibiting her art work actively throughout the country. She has participated in shows at Meredith Long & Company, Houston; John Pence Gallery, San Francisco; and the National Arts Club, New York. In 2000, she received first prize, the Catharine Lorillard Wolfe Art Club Medal of Honor, for her oil painting Altar Eg(g)o II. In 2003 she was selected to exhibit in Re-Presenting Representation VI at the Arnot Art Museum in Elmira, New York.
Veitzer currently resides in Manhattan and works at her studio in Brooklyn, New York.
LP/CV
© The essay herein is the property of Spanierman Gallery, LLC and is copyrighted by Spanierman Gallery, LLC, and may not be reproduced in whole or in part without written permission from Spanierman Gallery, LLC, nor shown or communicated to anyone without due credit being given to Spanierman Gallery, LLC.
1 Artist’s statement, January 2003.
