Mira Lehr: Burnt offerings
March 3 - April 16, 2011
The Flomenhaft Gallery is excited to exhibit Mira Lehr’s newest paintings. These works truly relate to the past, present and future. They have been created with all the beauty of the works that we know and love, but something has now been added; they are created with the additional element of gunpowder.
About her most recent works, Lehr says, “Fire moves through the images leaving a remnant, a memory of what was once there. Fire creates a new presence from something out of the past. It is a phantom; it is there and then not there. My paintings that once focused on the beauty of nature have been transformed from a peaceful, beautiful environment into something more dynamic, by creating both sides of existence, creation and destruction.”
She adds, “Fire changes each mark very rapidly but leaves a history of what was there. It creates a visceral experience that involves my senses totally. I feel the heat. I’m enveloped in smoke. I breathe it in and become a part of the painting in a sense. Fire is a primitive force in nature and I feel an elemental, almost alchemical response when I work with fire. Because fire’s unpredictability is similar to the uncertainty of life, it is like the constant struggle with existence.”
