Claire Boyle

Lives and works in San Francisco, CA

Artist statement

My paintings explore moments of celebration and social ceremony — weddings, meals, parties — teasing out the exuberant and sometimes unsettling spirit of these gatherings. The artist Richard Hull described the way these paintings “of hedonistic behavior — lounging, sunbathing, or enjoying a magnificent feast — reveal the darker side of pleasure.” I’m interested in the subterranean dynamics between people that often hum below the surface, and play with these ideas through visual conflation, disproportion, scale, and depictions of connection and withdrawal. I'm invested in depicting the feeling of a body rather than the strict appearance of one — in kinship with artists like Maria Lassnig, Marlene Dumas, and Tala Madani — through a loose, libidinal, odd handling of the figure, and the use of narrative scene as the means of exploring more abstract ideas. Toward this, I draw inspiration from medieval image-making, where things often feel at once wrong and charmingly human.

Artwork