Glow of Opera
March 24 – April 23, 2022
Artist’s Reception Saturday, March 26th, 1-4 pm
Featuring Recent Large Scale Paintings
Glow of Opera is Part One of our two part exhibition of Livia Stein’s work produced over the past two years of the Pandemic era. Featuring Stein’s recent large scale paintings, Glow of Opera responds to the drama, pageantry and passion of Opera as a vehicle for joy and meaning in the face of pervasive uncertainty and vulnerability. Stein’s paintings exude a fierce life force, archetypical characters and an expansive freedom with paint.
Livia Stein:
Part 1
The “glow of opera” coincided with the beginning of Covid. The most uncertain period our 21st century version of the plague, staying inside, no place to go, gave rise to a vision of hope for me. What i had known peripherally as a child, shared with my opera adoring father, returned to me.
He sat next to me during those first streamings from the ny Met. Dad sat to my right, David to my left. I was bathed in Joy, a quiet ecstasy of no longer trying to find direction past all the pain of a pandemic, but being completely confident i had grasped a moment of bliss.
My new ritual, night after day after day after night: get up, have breakfast, usually a poached egg and toast and Latte, do some yoga to unstiffen, head upstairs to the studio, grab lunch, work more, have dinner prepared by David, my favorite chef and then watch opera.
I began to draw in a bound sketchbook, the next day i worked over the drawings with gouache. Eventually drawings and gouche became prints and paintings.
I experimented with fountains pens and fed another obsession.
I survived by bathing in the glow of opera.
