About the Artist

Lisa Britton received her BFA in painting from Arizona State University. After graduation, she spent several months in Berlin, Germany, where she interned for photographer Isabelle Graeff and painter Ross Walker, in addition to co-curating a pop-up exhibition. She has shown work in the United States and Germany. Her work explores themes such as animal rights, disclosure and identity in social media, as well as notions of beauty and decay. Britton, along with friend and artist Alejandra Orozco, are creators of the blog, Pretty Girls Making Cool Shit, which features multiple female artists weekly; aiming to be fun and informative while creating a community of support and empowerment for female artists. She currently lives and works in Seattle, Washington.

Artist Statement

This body of work focuses on flora and fauna (primarily rabbits) in a slightly surreal or transcending space. These implied portals serve as an escape. These animals and scenes from nature are meant to be contemplative and alluring while immersing the viewer in an environment or perspective that is almost attainable. Question your perspective of nature and surroundings, why this animal, flower, plant, or location may invoke certain thoughts and feelings. 

Rabbits are used in my work based on my experience with rabbits and learning more about the contradictions in their reality versus the perception of rabbits by most of society. A rabbit spirit animal may symbolize prosperity, abundance, and fertility. Dreaming of a rabbit may signify luck, magic, success, positivity. Despite these positive attributes, rabbits continue to be one of the most exploited animal by humans, due to their use in the textile, pet, and meat industry, in addition to being a prime subject in animal testing. The rabbits portrayed in my work are experiencing a dream or escape from a reality or this controversy of truths. I disagree with those who argue these animals don’t dream, as Shirley Jackson wrote in The Haunting of Hill House: “No live organism can continue for long to exist sanely under conditions of absolute reality; even larks and katydids are supposed, by some, to dream.”

Artist Bio

Dana Oldfather is a painter who has exhibited internationally and nationally in galleries and museums including Library Street Collective, Detroit, Zg Gallery, Chicago, Kathryn Markel Fine Art, New York, The McDonough Museum of Art in Youngstown, The Carnegie Center for Art and History in New Albany, and The University of Southern Queensland, in Australia. She was awarded the William and Dorothy Yeck Award for Young Painters, two Ohio Arts Council Individual Excellence Awards, and most recently, a Satellite Fund Emergency Relief Grant from SPACES Gallery, The Warhol Foundation, and The Cleveland Foundation. Oldfather has been published in magazines and journals including Beautiful/Decay, ArtMaze Magazine, London UK, and the book The Art of Spray by Lori Zimmer of Art Nerd New York. Oldfather’s work has exhibited at art fairs in Houston, Miami, Palm Beach, and New York, including Art on Paper. Her paintings are internationally collected privately and can be found in many public and corporate collections in the US including Eaton Corporation, MGM International, Bedrock Detroit, The Cleveland Clinic, and the prestigious Progressive Art Collection. Dana Oldfather currently works and lives just outside Cleveland, Ohio with her husband Randall and young son Arlo.

Artist Statement

I explore isolation, taboos, and domestic frustration. Traditional ideas about femininity and motherhood are questioned as women in this work bounce back and forth between getting it done and becoming undone. A woman’s work in the home and family filters grime and despair as the world pushes through her. The figures in these paintings act in their surroundings rather than ornament them, and their actions represent how it feels to be a woman. The landscapes represent freedom; like the landscape one sees driving out of town on the interstate. Through allegory, exaggerated body language, color, and light I mirror an uneasy world distorted by apprehension. These portrayals of feminine challenge give prominence and dignity to the often-invisible work that nourishes the lives of others; they implore those who do this work to ask for help when it is needed. These paintings underscore the inherent emotional conflict of parenting young children and the fragility of comfort and happiness in America today.

What does “Gaze” mean to you & how do you connect it to your work?

I am interested in the way women’s bodies often appear in paintings: either nude as sexual objects, or ornamental objects easily reducible to a bowl of fruit on a table. The images we celebrate contribute to our ideas and expectations of ourselves and each other. What does the history of female bodies in painting say to women now (or to men now for that matter)? I never connected to the women in the paintings I studied. Most of them never seemed to be doing much of anything, let alone represent an ideal I wanted to aspire to. So, I join my contemporaries in contributing to an alternative image of women in art. The figures in my work actively move through space and the scenarios I invent represent what it feels like to be a woman – with all the fear, love, apprehension, support, and effort we put forth daily.