KARYN LYONS (B. 1981)
The Reader
oil on vellum
14 x 11in. (35.6 x 27.9cm.)
Executed in 2021

TURN Gallery, New York.
Acquired from the above by the present owner.

New York, TURN Gallery, Karyn Lyons: Under the Spell, 2021.

Painted in oil on vellum, The Reader depicts a young female subject in a private moment of solitude. Through loose, Expressionist brushstrokes, Karyn Lyons presents her subject slouched over a closed book, gazing longingly into the distance. This work belongs to Lyons’ Under the Spell series, in which the artist focuses upon her experience as a young woman, revisiting the desires and fantasies of her teenage years. In The Reader the viewer is presented with Lyons, or rather a version of herself, in an intimate, knowingly ambiguous picture. The vibrant colour palette and hazy tones lend themselves to the scene, conjuring a space between vivid memory and wistful, dreamlike trance. Speaking of her practice, Lyons states: 'During my adolescence, I felt cleaved through the heart... It has taken me all this time to look back on that girl with empathy' (K. Lyons quoted in S. Moroz, 'Karyn Lyons’ Dreamy, Evocative Paintings of Teenage Life', AnOther, 18 November 2021).

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