The catalog for Poetical Fire: Three Centuries of Still Lifes is for sale now at the Sheldon Museum bookstore. Sheldon Museum’s director Jorge Daniel Veneciano discusses my work, Archway to Happiness in the introductory essay, “Foreword: The Fruits of Reading a Genre.”
Here is what he had to say:
“We should ask what promises are implied by such still lifes. Albert Einstein captured this promise in his remark that a table, a chair, a bowl of fruit and a violin are all that one needs to be happy. Happiness attends the promise of still lifes. Does this traditional rhetoric hold today? Kira Greene’s recent painting [page 4] provides an arch interpretation of the still-life genre and the promise it makes. The pun in the title, Archway to Happiness, may or may not be her intention, but it supports a reading of the work as satirically commenting on the very rhetoric of the genre. It also foregrounds the transnational nature of still lifes, carrying allusions to Celtic, Moorish, and pan-Asian cultures.” (Poetical Fire: Three Centuries of Still Lifes, p.7)
Kira Nam Greene’s work explores female sexuality, desire and control through figure and food still-life paintings, surrounded by complex patterns. Imbuing the feminist legacies of Pattern and Decoration Movement with transnational, multicultural motifs, Greene creates colorful paintings that are unique combinations of realism and abstraction, employing diverse media such as oil, acrylic, gouache, watercolor and colored pencil. Combining Pop Art tropes and transnationalism, she also examines the politics of food through the depiction of brand name food products, or junk food. Recently, Greene started a figurative painting series spurred by the 2016 Presidential Election, Women’s March, #metoo movement and ensuing crisis of conscience, this new body of work aspires to present the power of collective action by women.