*Available and on Display at 600 Julia Street*

I am drawn to liminal moments – times when places shift. In ‘Decatur Street after the Rain’, we see last fleeting rays of daylight welcomed by the street lamps and headlights and feel the relief of cool that a storm can bring to the pavement. ‘Decatur Street after the Rain’ is a quiet scene, reminiscent of Hopper in which the glow of a city can be both warm and melancholy. I enjoy representing concurrent and softly dissonant realities. The painting shows a space that belongs to tourists, the homeless, and locals (represented by the chair on the balcony). I approach painting with an intention to democratize details, in which things that are commonly hidden are represented with an even-hand. In this spirit, my paintings often include telephone poles, trash cans, and other such markings of urban-ism. ----- from the 'Crescent City Instantiate' series: *Instantiate (v): 1. represent as or by an instance. 2. (of a universal or abstract concept) have an instance; be represented by an actual example. Recent oil paintings by New Orleans artist Stephanie Reed recreate moments from her lived experience with a loving kindness and even-handed fidelity to form. Reed transcribes light, color and shape to canvas in a practice of “being with” scenes she has witnessed/captured that range from quiet solitude to boisterous festivity. In this meditative dive, time slows and intimate slices of specific worlds unfold, invoked by visceral layers of brush and palette knife strokes. The paintings bear the accumulative marks of the artist’s patient and persistent gaze doggedly seeking form and memory. Reed’s approach to imagery is sincere but not literal, and the paintings resist reduction to the merely illustrative and mutate upon closer inspection, indulging in painterly gestures and layered dynamic abstractions.