Elizabeth Glaessner often begins a new painting with a pour of oil paint. As it pools on the surface of her canvases, it becomes something to which she can react; she pushes, spreads, layers, builds up, or wipes away paint to create mysteriously ethereal figures that consume her compositions.
“Head Games,” an exhibition of fifteen of Glaessner’s small paintings alongside two of larger scale, demonstrates the strength and scope of her painterly aesthetic. Pictorialism, process, and performance converge in these works, revealing not only her facility with the oil medium but also how our perception of ourselves and others depends on a play of imagination and reality. Seldomly exhibited altogether, the small-scale paintings offer a survey of Glaessner’s particular process, and a glimpse inside her mind.
