Edie Nadelhaft

Lives and works in New York, NY, USA

Artist statement

My current works are oil on shaped-canvas paintings of human irises and finger tips framed in fussy gold leaf. Very recently I have begun experimenting with acrylic domes and convex glass on the iris pieces that can alternately read as a protective bubble or a replica of the cornea. Initially begun in response to the isolation and pensive watchfulness of the pandemic lockdown, the project combines humor and visual curiosity to produce a skeptical inquiry into the history of portraiture. Additional inspirations are the extraordinary images of deep space transmitted by the Webb telescope (a welcome sense of scale and perspective during a particularly stressful time here on planet earth!), my concerns about big data, the evolving sociopolitical fortunes of women in contemporary America and beyond, and my perpetual wonder at the strange beauty of what it means to exist in a finite physical state. These paintings are essentially portraits-portraits of women, to be more specific. My process begins with a slightly awkward photo session, followed by an impatient flurry of mark-making and a long period of blurring and tweaking to produce a tight but painterly image of a tiny, highly idiosyncratic detail of an individual person. Seen from such close range and removed from the context of the rest of the body, the rings and ridges of an iris or finger tip appear to me like a vast, otherworldly landscape. In reality, what I'm looking at is a collection of biometric data: bits and bites...

Artwork