Rose's Grenadine: Eva Lewis and Meghan Murray

Joint Exhibition Statement by Artists

Rose's Grenadine presents a collection of work from the past two years; two years beyond graduation from Boston University's MFA Painting program where our friendship was kindled in 2020 by a mutual adoration of color, a love for Painting. Though our studios are now separated by state lines instead of a white wall, we each continue to develop concepts seeded at the studios at 808 Commonwealth and have become immersed in themes of storytelling, gender, and the pleasure and discomfort of seeing and being seen. 

These paintings are sweet but artificial, like a glance at a memory through rose-colored glasses. Appropriated images of adolescent girls are presented as familiar, despite the fact that they're sourced from photographs purchased via eBay - an exchange directly speaking to the commodification of nostalgia. The found photo paintings hold space for conflicting emotion; they can be both nostalgic and critical, sentimental and distant, earnest and humorous. The young figures herein are on the verge of self-awareness; dancing girls lock eyes with the camera lens with confidence, unaware that their very bodies might one day be objectified, criticized, even politicized. In these brief, captured moments, though, they are the embodiment of play. 

Just as playful, the rosy, female-presenting bodies radiate a quiet power. The paintings are cropped compositionally to emphasize an intimate relationship with the viewer - or perhaps reflexively with the subject herself. The feminine twenty-somethings occupy a surreally rose-colored space seemingly with the knowledge and desire to be seen and empowered within their bodies. They find themselves pursuing pleasure; eating, lounging, delighting. The figures are painted into a ruby world made just for them, a world in which they can experience comfort while retaining bodily autonomy.

In four years of painter-friendship, we've often picked up common threads and pulled. We're drawn to storytelling (film directors such as Sofia Coppola and Greta Gerwig, and writers like Jenny Slate) that describes a deep hunger for female autonomy and a rage against the inevitable growing pains felt by ambitious women. We discover and share literature and music that engage in our discussion of beauty and feminist theory. We compare notes on color, and have found ourselves wading through a syrupy grenadine pink, which can be attained as easily with quinacridone opera and cadmium as it can be with red dye 40. Though applying this rosy tint from two perspectives, our work in conversation attempts to describe the angst and discomfort felt within the female body, especially as we age and grow in and out of ourselves.