Lieby Miedema, The Painting Center Gallery, 65 Greene Street to October 29
It is interesting that Lieby Miedema is coupled with Elizabeth Yamin at the Painting Center because there are many similarities to their work. Most obvious is their crowded treatment of space in filling the picture plane with a variety of color and texture. But Miedama’s work is all the denser for it. Sometimes this opens interesting avenues for subject matter as in painting like Always which suggests a sense of immersion in a crowd of brightly dressed people. No figures are distinguishable but the painting presents the essence of the experience. An undulating sense of motion is projected though not as an optical trick.
Lieby Miedema, Always, acrylic & mixed media on arches paper, 15 x 11 in
Occasionally large areas are loosely defined within these pieces. A good example is a really fine painting called, Riva where a large black shape dominates the canvas like a dark shadow. There is nothing particularly malevolent about this form just that the black is so omnipotent. Nevertheless the forms captured within it are permitted to breath. As a result the painting is rendered fully dimensional. In lesser hands the black may have obliterated everything else but here a dialogue is created between the black cast and the painted forms that are inside and out of its influence.
All of this work is rather small and contained yet each seems to yearn for more territory. In this way they environmentally suggest a sense of place. It would be interesting to see them at 4 times their dimensions and as paintings on canvas or perhaps as large collages. Given such a treatment they would explode from their diminutive
Lieby Miedema, Riva, acrylic & mixed media on arches paper, 15 x 11 in
confines to fully engage on an environmental level. Then too because the dimensions are similar and diminutive, they might have factored as serial pieces. But that doesn’t occur because each retains a unique identity and a wide array of expression while holding together stylistically.
Lieby Miedema, Tribunal, acrylic & mixed media on arches paper, 15 x 11 in
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