Georgia Elrod, Heartbeats

Peninsula Art Space is pleased to present Heartbeats, an exhibition of recent work by Georgia Elrod. Comprised of paintings in the main space and drawings in the smaller room, the show will be on view from September 21st through November 10th. 

Utilizing a combination of gouache, pastels, pencil, and oil, Elrod creates intricate mixed media paintings and works on paper. This recent group of work began several years ago as the artist experienced having a child and depicts specific “moments of being,” which become encoded with autobiographical narratives. The resulting imagery investigates what happens within and around bodies as they function, change, surge. The slowly unfolding and often sensual works include intersecting interiors and exteriors of bodies to humanize and complicate the way we interpret the figure. They visually explore and deconstruct the nuances of common human experiences such as sleeping, thinking, breastfeeding, even dying. 

Positing physical identity as a kind of living abstraction, the imagery can be both familiar and unidentifiable. By letting go of anatomical rules, the borders around and within the figures blur. Zooming in on particular bodily functions, the works poeticize the ribs moving with breath, the spine at rest, the beating of a heart.